Alice: The rosetta Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph

We describe the design, performance and scientific objectives of the NASA-funded ALICE instrument aboard the ESA Rosetta asteroid flyby/comet rendezvous mission. ALICE is a lightweight, low-power, and low-cost imaging spectrograph optimized for cometary far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectroscopy. It will be the first UV spectrograph to study a comet at close range. It is designed to obtain spatially-resolved spectra of Rosetta mission targets in the 700–2050 Å spectral band with a spectral resolution between 8 Å and 12 Å for extended sources that fill its ～0.05^ × 6.0^ field-of-view. ALICE employs an off-axis telescope feeding a 0.15-m normal incidence Rowland circle spectrograph with a toroidal concave holographic reflection grating. The microchannel plate detector utilizes dual solar-blind opaque photocathodes (KBr and CsI) and employs a two-dimensional delay-line readout array. The instrument is controlled by an internal microprocessor. During the prime Rosetta mission, ALICE will characterize comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's coma, its nucleus, and nucleus/coma coupling; during cruise to the comet, ALICE will make observations of the mission's two asteroid flyby targets and of Mars, its moons, and of Earth's moon. ALICE has already successfully completed the in-flight commissioning phase and is operating well in flight. It has been characterized in flight with stellar flux calibrations, observations of the Moon during the first Earth fly-by, and observations of comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) in 2004 and comet 9P/Tempel 1 during the 2005 Deep Impact comet-collision observing campaign.     

Artificial Beam Sharpening Technique for Radar Beacon Systems

A method of improving angular discrimination artificially in radar beacon systems, without going to extremely high frequencies of operation or using unreasonably large interrogator antennas, involves the use of a null-type antenna pattern superposed on a normal directional beam. The effective are over which replies are obtained is determined by an amplitude discriminator circuit within the beacon which compares the amplitude of the pulse signals received on the null pattern with those received via the directional beam. Only if the latter exceed the former by a predetermined amount does the beacon produce a reply. The method, which has been tried experimentally and its theory verified, produces an increase in traffic handling capacity, as well as improved angular resolution, by reducing unwanted triggering and, hence, clutter on the display and the over-interrogation of transponder beacons. An antenna is described which eliminates triggering on sidelobes by providing the proper current distribution to the radiating elements to cause the null pattern to cover the sidelobes of the normal beam. Triple-pulse amplitude discriminators have been built and tested in a double-pulse interrogation system. Some theoretical considerations and design curves and equations for use in designing nulltype antennas are given in the Appendix.     

Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) Investigation

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) investigation will use a 2-megapixel color camera with a focusable macro lens aboard the rover, Curiosity, to investigate the stratigraphy and grain-scale texture, structure, mineralogy, and morphology of geologic materials in northwestern Gale crater. Of particular interest is the stratigraphic record of a ～5?km thick layered rock sequence exposed on the slopes of Aeolis Mons (also known as Mount Sharp). The instrument consists of three parts, a?camera head mounted on the turret at the end of a robotic arm, an electronics and data storage assembly located inside the rover body, and a calibration target mounted on the robotic arm shoulder azimuth actuator housing. MAHLI can acquire in-focus images at working distances from ～2.1?cm to infinity. At the minimum working distance, image pixel scale is ～14?μm per pixel and very coarse silt grains can be resolved. At the working distance of the Mars Exploration Rover Microscopic Imager cameras aboard Spirit and Opportunity, MAHLI’s resolution is comparable at ～30?μm per pixel. Onboard capabilities include autofocus, auto-exposure, sub-framing, video imaging, Bayer pattern color interpolation, lossy and lossless compression, focus merging of up to 8 focus stack images, white light and longwave ultraviolet (365 nm) illumination of nearby subjects, and 8 gigabytes of non-volatile memory data storage.     

Cosmic rays in the outer solar system

A space mission to Jupiter and Saturn, and beyond, provides an opportunity to explore the low energy galactic cosmic rays, which are largely excluded from the inner solar system by the outward sweep of the magnetic fields in the solar wind. The low energy cosmic rays are believed to be responsible for much of the heating of the gaseous disk of the galaxy, so a measurement of their intensity will have far reaching effects on theories of the interstellar gas and the evolution of the galaxy. The nuclear abundances, and in particular the presence or absence of high Z nuclei, will give critical information on the proximity of cosmic ray sources.This is one of the publications by the Science Advisory Group.     

Managing Complexity in an Autonomous Vehicle

Team Tormenta fielded an autonomous vehicle in the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005. Limiting the complexity of the autonomous system design, construction, and testing was crucial in rapidly designing a cost-effective working system. This approach allowed Team Tormenta to field a competitive vehicle on a low budget competing in the qualification trials.     

Solar Magnetism: The State of Our Knowledge and Ignorance

We review some longstanding scientific mysteries related to solar magnetism, with final attention to the mystery of the “turbulent diffusion” essential for the theoretical α ω-dynamo that is believed to be the source of the magnetic fields of the Sun. Fundamental difficulties with the concept of turbulent diffusion of magnetic fields suggest that the solar dynamo problem needs to be reformulated. An alternative dynamo model is proposed, but it remains to be shown that the model can provide the quantitative aspects of the cyclic magnetic fields of the Sun.     

MMW system trade-offs

A brief review is given of the current state of knowledge of millimeter-wave atmospheric propagation and clutter characteristics and the detection performance of two air-to-ground fire-control systems evaluated in terms of their ability to detect a 40-m² target in the presence of atmospheric attenuation and three types of clutter. Generally, the 35-GHz system considered performed better in terms of signal-to-noise ratio performance and in signal-to-clutter ratio performance for light clutter. In heavy clutter, the 95-GHz system performed significantly better than the 35-GHz system. For 300-m altitude with refrozen snow clutter background, neither system developed a large enough signal-to-clutter radio to detect the target reliably     

Optimal and Suboptimal Control Synthesis for Minimum Time VTOL Transition

Optimal open-loop and suboptimal closed-loop controls for a VTOL aircraft in a minimum climb-to-cruise time transition are presented in this paper. The optimal open-loop controls are synthesized by a proposed gradient technique which provides for the selection of desired changes in physically meaningful parameters during each iteration step. The suboptimal closed-loop controls are synthesized as integral mean-square approximations to the optimal open-loop controls over the minimum time-to- climb interval. Piecewiseconstant feedback gains and switching times are synthesized for multidimensional control vectors which are linear combinations of observable states. Several computational results are presented for optimal and suboptimal minimum time controls with constrained and unconstrained terminal flight-path angles.     

Application of time-variable process noise in terrestrial reference frames determined from VLBI data

In recent years, Kalman filtering has emerged as a suitable technique to determine terrestrial reference frames (TRFs), a prime example being JTRF2014. The time series approach allows variations of station coordinates that are neither reduced by observational corrections nor considered in the functional model to be taken into account. These variations are primarily due to non-tidal geophysical loading effects that are not reduced according to the current IERS Conventions (2010). It is standard practice that the process noise models applied in Kalman filter TRF solutions are derived from time series of loading displacements and account for station dependent differences. So far, it has been assumed that the parameters of these process noise models are constant over time. However, due to the presence of seasonal and irregular variations, this assumption does not truly reflect reality. In this study, we derive a station coordinate process noise model allowing for such temporal variations. This process noise model and one that is a parameterized version of the former are applied in the computation of TRF solutions based on very long baseline interferometry data. In comparison with a solution based on a constant process noise model, we find that the station coordinates are affected at the millimeter level.