Ultraviolet spectrometer experiment for the Voyager mission

The Voyager Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) is an objective grating spectrometer covering the wavelength range of 500–1700 Å with 10 Å resolution. Its primary goal is the determination of the composition and structure of the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and several of their satellites. The capability for two very different observational modes have been combined in a single instrument. Observations in the airglow mode measure radiation from the atmosphere due to resonant scattering of the solar flux or energetic particle bombardment, and the occultation mode provides measurements of the atmospheric extinction of solar or stellar radiation as the spacecraft enters the shadow zone behind the target. In addition to the primary goal of the solar system atmospheric measurements, the UVS is expected to make valuable contributions to stellar astronomy at wavelengths below 1000 Å.     

Defending a Moving Target Against Missile or Torpedo Attack

Problems involving kinematics of a counterweapon intercepting an attacking missile are well known. However, when the attacker's target, the counterweapon's launch platform, is moving, the problem generally becomes amenable only to trajectory simulation. Such may be the case in defense against torpedo attack against a ship and other situations involving the use of antimissile missiles. This paper derives the kinematic relations among the three bodies (missile, target, and counterweapon) in closed form under the asymptotic approximation of constant-bearing trajectories (collision courses). It is shown that the defending target, even if moving, can still determine the optimum course for its counterweapon when range and speed of the attacking vehicle are unknown. A simple relation is derived for the ratio between the attacker-target range (and time to impact) at counterweapon launch and the range at interception of the attacker by the counterweapon. Normalized curves are presented for some representative cases of defense by a counterweapon of known speed against a torpedo or missile attack on a moving target. The equations are shown to reduce to the familiar form for a stationary target.     

ATC Beacon Interference Characteristics in the New York Area

An experimental program is described that had the objective of measuring the effects of the time-dependent structure of downlink (air craft to ground) interference generated by the Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System (ATCRBS) in an active air traffic terminal area that are relevant to system and ground controller response time. The results of this program indicate a number of interesting details concerning the correlation of the level of the downlink interference with changes in the arrival and departure rates of aircraft at the local terminal sites.     

A survey of the outer planets Jupiter,Saturn, Uranus,Neptune, Pluto,and their satellites

A survey of current knowledge about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and their satellites is presented. The best available numerical values are given for physical parameters, including orbital and body properties, atmospheric composition and structure, and photometric parameters. The more acceptable current theories of these bodies are outlined with thorough referencing offering access to the details. The survey attempts to cover the literature through May 1, 1972. Prepared Under Contract No. NAS7-100 National Aeronautics and Space Administration.     

The Local Bubble and Interstellar Material Near the Sun

The properties of interstellar matter at the Sun are regulated by our location with respect to a void in the local matter distribution, known as the Local Bubble. The Local Bubble (LB) is bounded by associations of massive stars and fossil supernovae that have disrupted dense interstellar matter (ISM), driving low density intermediate velocity ISM into the void. The Sun appears to be located in one of these flows of low density material. This nearby interstellar matter, dubbed the Local Fluff, has a bulk velocity of ∼19 km s⁻¹ in the local standard of rest. The flow is coming from the direction of the gas and dust ring formed where the Loop I supernova remnant merges into the LB. Optical polarization data suggest that the local interstellar magnetic field lines are draped over the heliosphere. A longstanding discrepancy between the high thermal pressure of plasma filling the LB and low thermal pressures in the embedded Local Fluff cloudlets is partially mitigated when the ram pressure component parallel to the cloudlet flow direction is included.     

Adaptive cancellation method for geometry-induced nonstationary bistatic clutter environments

This paper describes and characterizes a new bistatic space-time adaptive processing (STAP) clutter mitigation method. The approach involves estimating and compensating aspects of the spatially varying bistatic clutter response in both angle and Doppler prior to adaptive clutter suppression. An important feature of the proposed method is its ability to extract requisite implementation information from the data itself, rather than rely on ancillary - and possibly erroneous or missing - system measurements. We justify the essence of the proposed method by showing its ability to align the dominant clutter subspaces of each range realization relative to a suitably chosen reference point as a means of homogenizing the space-time data set. Moreover, we numerically characterize performance using synthetic bistatic clutter data. For the examples considered herein, the proposed bistatic STAP method leads to maximum performance improvements between 17.25 dB and 20.75 dB relative to traditional STAP application, with average improvements of 6 dB to 10 dB.     

Search radar detection and track with the Hough transform. II.detection statistics

For pt.I see ibid., vol.30, no.1, (Jan.1994). This paper describes the calculation of P_F and P_D for the Hough transform technique when the primary threshold crossings are weighted by their power before transforming (i.e., noncoherent integration). After expressions for P_F and P_D are derived, we examine the question of optimal granularity of the Hough accumulator space. We also investigate the relationship between primary and secondary thresholds and its effect on detectability     

Multiple target tracking using products of position measurements

The continued development of the symmetric measurement equation (SME) filter for track maintenance in multiple target tracking (MTT) is considered, focusing on the case in which the SMEs are generated by forming sums of products of the original position measurements. The SME filter is developed for the case of N targets whose motions consist of random perturbations about constant-velocity trajectories. It is assumed that measurements of x-coordinate positions are available, and that the number of measurements is equal to the number of targets. Various analytical properties of the SME filter are studied. It is shown that under a very weak condition, the estimation error equation is locally exponentially stable. The performance of the SME filter is investigated by comparing it with an optimal (minimum-variance) estimator and by generating a computer simulation in the six-target case     

An Overview of the Fast Auroral SnapshoT (FAST) Satellite

The FAST satellite is a highly sophisticated scientific satellite designed to carry out in situ measurements of acceleration physics and related plasma processes associated with the Earth's aurora. Initiated and conceptualized by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, this satellite is the second of NASA's Small Explorer Satellite program designed to carry out small, highly focused, scientific investigations. FAST was launched on August 21, 1996 into a high inclination (83°) elliptical orbit with apogee and perigee altitudes of 4175 km and 350 km, respectively. The spacecraft design was tailored to take high-resolution data samples (or `snapshots') only while it crosses the auroral zones, which are latitudinally narrow sectors that encircle the polar regions of the Earth. The scientific instruments include energetic electron and ion electrostatic analyzers, an energetic ion instrument that distinguishes ion mass, and vector DC and wave electric and magnetic field instruments. A state-of-the-art flight computer (or instrument data processing unit) includes programmable processors that trigger the burst data collection when interesting physical phenomena are encountered and stores these data in a 1 Gbit solid-state memory for telemetry to the Earth at later times. The spacecraft incorporates a light, efficient, and highly innovative design, which blends proven sub-system concepts with the overall scientific instrument and mission requirements. The result is a new breed of space physics mission that gathers unprecedented fields and particles observations that are continuous and uninterrupted by spin effects. In this and other ways, the FAST mission represents a dramatic advance over previous auroral satellites. This paper describes the overall FAST mission, including a discussion of the spacecraft design parameters and philosophy, the FAST orbit, instrument and data acquisition systems, and mission operations.