Planned Products of the Mars Structure Service for the InSight Mission to Mars

Space Science Reviews - The InSight lander will deliver geophysical instruments to Mars in 2018, including seismometers installed directly on the surface (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure,...     

A solar extreme ultraviolet telescope and spectrograph for Shuttle/Spacelab

An instrument for advanced studies of the solar corona is described. Its optical system provides nearly stigmatic imaging of selected portions of the Sun over the spectral range from 22.5 to 44.0 nm. Both spectroheliograms and emission line profiles of coronal features will be obtained over a wide range of coronal temperatures.Proceedings of the Conference Solar Physics from Space, held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ), 11–14 November 1980.This paper was presented at the conference by U. Feldman.     

The Surface of Mercury as Seen by Mariner 10

The Mariner 10 spacecraft made three flyby passes of Mercury in 1974 and 1975. It imaged a little less than half of the surface and discovered Mercury had an intrinsic magnetic field. This paper briefly describes the surface of Mercury as seen by Mariner 10 as a backdrop to the discoveries made since then by ground-based observations and the optimistic anticipation of new discoveries by MESSENGER and BepiColombo spacecraft that are scheduled for encounter in the next decade.     

Johannes Geiss: Explorer of the Elements

The extraordinary life and scientific achievements of Johannes Geiss span an almost impossible breadth of scientific topics, from the study of rocks to tenuous plasmas, from volcanoes to meteorites. But, his impact also extends way beyond the field of science. Professor Geiss is a well-known teacher and a highly successful science leader whose impact has been felt at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, and around the globe. We present here a brief summary of this highly successful career via a pictorial overview and a movie compiled by a former student who had the good luck to work with Professor Geiss during his years at the University of Bern. Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Solar Wind Conditions and Composition During the Genesis Mission as Measured by in situ Spacecraft

We describe the Genesis mission solar-wind sample collection period and the solar wind conditions at the L1 point during this 2.3-year period. In order to relate the solar wind samples to solar composition, the conditions under which the samples were collected must be understood in the context of the long-term solar wind. We find that the state of the solar wind was typical of conditions over the past four solar cycles. However, Genesis spent a relatively large fraction of the time in coronal-hole flow as compared to what might have been expected for the declining phase of the solar cycle. Data from the Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) on the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) are used to determine the effectiveness of the Genesis solar-wind regime selection algorithm. The data collected by SWICS confirm that the Genesis algorithm successfully separated and collected solar wind regimes having distinct solar origins, particularly in the case of the coronal hole sample. The SWICS data also demonstrate that the different regimes are elementally fractionated. When compared with Ulysses composition data from the previous solar cycle, we find a similar degree of fractionation between regimes as well as fractionation relative to the average photospheric composition. The Genesis solar wind samples are under long-term curation at NASA Johnson Space Center so that as sample analysis techniques evolve, pristine solar wind samples will be available to the scientific community in the decades to come. This article and a companion paper (Wiens et al. 2013, this issue) provide post-flight information necessary for the analysis of the Genesis array and foil solar wind samples and the Genesis solar wind ion concentrator samples, and thus serve to complement the Space Science Review volume, The Genesis Mission (v. 105, 2003).     

Comparative study of the dust emission of 19P/Borrelly (Deep space 1) and 1P/Halley

Images obtained by the Miniature Integrated Camera and Imaging Spectrometer (MICAS) experiment onboard the Deep Space 1 spacecraft which encountered comet 19P/Borrelly on September 22nd 2001 show a dust coma dominated by jets. In particular a major collimated dust jet on the sunward side of the nucleus was observed. Our approach to analyse these features is to integrate the observed intensity in concentric envelopes around the nucleus. The same procedures has been used on the Halley Multicolour Camera images of comet 1P/Halley acquired on March 14th 1986. We are able to show that at Borrelly the dust brightness dependence as a function of radial distance is different to that of Halley. At large distances both comets show constant values as the size of the concentric envelopes increases (as one would expect for force free radial outflow). For Halley the integral decreases as one gets closer to the nucleus. Borrelly shows opposite behaviour. The main cause for Halley's intensity distribution is either high optical thickness or particle fragmentation. For Borrelly, we have constructed a simple model of the brightness distribution near the nucleus. This indicates that the influence of deviations from point source geometry is insufficient to explain the observed steepening of the intensity profile close to the nucleus. Dust acceleration or fragmentation into submicron particles appear to be required. We also estimate the dust production rate of Borrelly with respect to Halley and compare their dust to gas ratios.     

Spatial memory exclusivity: Examining performance of multiple object-location memories

Research on location memory suggests that integration of separate sources of information does not occur when recalling the position of a common target object. In a relatively simple task, previous research shows no observable benefit from holding two spatial memories compared to one. It has been suggested that exclusively utilizing only one of two memories may account for this finding. The current research tests the robustness of this idea as well as an alternative in the form of an averaging approach to combining spatial information. The results suggest that exclusivity may not be the best account for performance of multiple object-location memories. Rather, memories may well combine in a manner similar to averaging, where information is available for each memory but combined in a nonbeneficial way.     

DebrisWatch I: A survey of faint geosynchronous debris

Recent anomalies exhibited by satellites and rocket bodies have highlighted that a population of faint debris exists at geosynchronous (GEO) altitudes, where there are no natural removal mechanisms. Despite previous optical surveys probing to around 10–20 cm in size, regular monitoring of faint sources at GEO is challenging, thus our knowledge remains sparse. It is essential that we continue to explore the faint debris population using large telescopes to better understand the risk posed to active GEO satellites. To this end, we present photometric results from a survey of the GEO region carried out with the 2.54 m Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Canary Islands. We probe to 21st visual magnitude (around 10 cm, assuming Lambertian spheres with an albedo of 0.1), uncovering 129 orbital tracks with GEO-like motion across the eight nights of dark-grey time comprising the survey. The faint end of our brightness distribution continues to rise until the sensitivity limit of the sensor is reached, suggesting that the modal brightness could be even fainter. We uncover a number of faint, uncatalogued objects that show photometric signatures of rapid tumbling, many of which straddle the limiting magnitude of our survey over the course of a single exposure, posing a complex issue when estimating object size. This work presents the first instalment of DebrisWatch, an ongoing collaboration between the University of Warwick and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (UK) investigating the faint population of GEO debris.