Outer space and cosmopolitics

The two superpowers engaged in power politics on Earth, the USA and the USSR, have devoted great financial and technical efforts to the exploration, control and use of outer space, primarily to gain power-political advantages. This article considers the issue of power politics in outer space. The history and the instruments of ‘cosmopolitical power’ are discussed, as well as the attempts to limit the superpowers' dominance. A united Western Europe is seen to have a major role to play in providing a counterbalance to the concentration of space power.     

On combining adaptive nullsteering with high resolution angleestimation under main lobe interference conditions

When adaptive nullsteering is applied to attenuate interfering signals which are received via the main lobe, two limitations manifest themselves: the sidelobe level increases and the peak of the main beam shifts away from the desired look direction (squinted main beam). A two-step method is described which maintains angular accuracy even under main lobe interference conditions. In the first step, adaptive nullsteering is performed to enable the detection of targets; the distortion of the main beam is allowed. In the second step, high-resolution angle estimation techniques are used to obtain the angles of the target and the interference sources. The procedure requires prior knowledge of the number of interfering signals; an interference map can be used to provide this information     

India''s space policy : A developing country in the ‘Space Club’

Athough a poor nation with limited resources, India has spent large amounts of money on sophisticated space programme. It is pursuing a policy of using high technology to solve the country's social and economic problems, and at the same time to strengthen its international position. Satellite-aided communications, educational programmes, meteorology and resources survey and management are thus priority areas. This article examines the history and achievements of India's space programme, and considers the constraints faced and budget and staffing plans. Foreign policy and national security aspects are covered in detail, including the question of whether India's peaceful space policy can be put to military use.     

Daytime Ionosphere Retrieval Algorithm for the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON)

The NASA Ionospheric Connection Explorer Extreme Ultraviolet spectrograph, ICON EUV, will measure altitude profiles of the daytime extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) OII emission near 83.4 and 61.7 nm that are used to determine density profiles and state parameters of the ionosphere. This paper describes the algorithm concept and approach to inverting these measured OII emission profiles to derive the associated \(\mathrm{O}^{+}\) density profile from 150–450 km as a proxy for the electron content in the F-region of the ionosphere. The algorithm incorporates a bias evaluation and feedback step, developed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory using data from the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Limb Imager (SSULI) and the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System (RAIDS) missions, that is able to effectively mitigate the effects of systematic instrument calibration errors and inaccuracies in the original photon source within the forward model. Results are presented from end-to-end simulations that convolved simulated airglow profiles with the expected instrument measurement response to produce profiles that were inverted with the algorithm to return data products for comparison to truth. Simulations of measurements over a representative ICON orbit show the algorithm is able to reproduce hmF2 values to better than 5 km accuracy, and NmF2 to better than 12% accuracy over a 12-second integration, and demonstrate that the ICON EUV instrument and daytime ionosphere algorithm can meet the ICON science objectives which require 20 km vertical resolution in hmF2 and 18% precision in NmF2.     

Strategies for in-orbit calibration of drag-free control systems

Drag-Free Satellites (DFS) are a class of scientific satellite missions designed for research on fundamental physics as well as geodesy. They consist, basically, of a small inner satellite (test mass) located in a cavity inside a larger satellite, the normal one. The Drag-Free Attitude Control System (DFACS) is the most complex technology on-board these satellites. This key technology allows the residual accelerations on experiments on board the satellites to be significantly reduced. In order to achieve this very low disturbance environment (for some missions <10⁻¹⁴ g) the drag-free control system has to be optimized. This optimization process is required because of uncertainties in system parameters that demand a robustness of the control system. This paper will present approaches for in-orbit calibration of drag-free control systems. The discussion includes modeling, with scale factors and cross couplings, possible excitation signals, comparison of different parameter identification/estimation methods as well as simulation results.     

A small mission for in situ exploration of a primitive binary near-Earth asteroid

We present a concept for a challenging in situ science mission to a primitive, binary near-Earth asteroid. A sub-400-kg spacecraft would use solar electric propulsion to rendezvous with the C-class binary asteroid (175706) 1996 FG3. A campaign of remote observations of both worlds would be followed by landing on the ∼1 km diameter primary to perform in situ measurements. The total available payload mass would be around 34 kg, allowing a wide range of measurement objectives to be addressed. This mission arose during 2004 from the activities of the ad-hoc Small Bodies Group of the DLR-led Planetary Lander Initiative. Although the particular mission scenario proposed here was not studied further per se, the experience was carried over to subsequent European asteroid mission studies, including first LEONARD and now the Marco Polo near-Earth asteroid sample return proposal for ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme. This paper may thus be of interest as much for insight into the life cycle of mission proposals as for the concept itself.     

Performance analysis of an attitude control system for solar sails using sliding masses

This paper deals with the attitude control performance analysis of a square solar sail. Two sliding masses are moved inside and along mast lanyards for the control around the pitch and yaw axes. An optimal linear controller with a feedback and a feedforward part is used to control the attitude of the sail. Numerical simulations have been carried out to investigate the system’s ability of performing precise and near-time-optimal reorientation maneuvers as well as the controller’s sensitivity with respect to the sail parameters, as the center of pressure to the center of mass offset or the sail’s size. Our simulation results are finally shown and discussed.     

Surface elements and landing strategies for small bodies missions – Philae and beyond

The investigation of small bodies, comets and asteroids, can contribute substantially to our understanding of the formation and history of the Solar System. In-situ observations by Landers play a prominent role in this field.The Rosetta Lander – Philae – is currently on its way to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It will land in November 2014 and perform numerous experiments with a suite of 10 scientific instruments.Philae has been designed to cope with a wide range of possible comet properties. The considerations taken during its development are relevant for future Lander missions to small bodies in the Solar System.In addition the paper provides a review of alternative concepts, studied or developed for various missions like Phobos, Hayabusa/Minerva or Géocroiseur/Leonard.Various missions to small bodies in the Solar System, including Landers, are currently studied (e.g., Marco Polo). The paper will address the mission options and compare applicable technologies with the solutions chosen for Philae.     

Validation of numerical prediction of dynamic derivatives: The DLR-F12 and the Transcruiser test cases

The dynamic derivatives are widely used in linear aerodynamic models in order to determine the flying qualities of an aircraft: the ability to predict them reliably, quickly and sufficiently early in the design process is vital in order to avoid late and costly component redesigns. This paper describes experimental and computational research dealing with the determination of dynamic derivatives carried out within the FP6 European project SimSAC. Numerical and experimental results are compared for two aircraft configurations: a generic civil transport aircraft, wing-fuselage-tail configuration called the DLR-F12 and a generic Transonic CRuiser, which is a canard configuration. Static and dynamic wind tunnel tests have been carried out for both configurations and are briefly described within this paper. The data generated for both the DLR-F12 and TCR configurations include force and pressure coefficients obtained during small amplitude pitch, roll and yaw oscillations while the data for the TCR configuration also include large amplitude oscillations, in order to investigate the dynamic effects on nonlinear aerodynamic characteristics. In addition, dynamic derivatives have been determined for both configurations with a large panel of tools, from linear aerodynamic (Vortex Lattice Methods) to CFD. This work confirms that an increase in fidelity level enables the dynamic derivatives to be calculated more accurately. Linear aerodynamics tools are shown to give satisfactory results but are very sensitive to the geometry/mesh input data. Although all the quasi-steady CFD approaches give comparable results (robustness) for steady dynamic derivatives, they do not allow the prediction of unsteady components for the dynamic derivatives (angular derivatives with respect to time): this can be done with either a fully unsteady approach i.e. with a time-marching scheme or with frequency domain solvers, both of which provide comparable results for the DLR-F12 test case. As far as the canard configuration is concerned, strong limitations for the linear aerodynamic tools are observed. A key aspect of this work are the acceleration techniques developed for CFD methods, which allow the computational time to be dramatically reduced while providing comparable results.