Storing and processing astrometric and photometric data on NEA: Current state and future in Russia

Numerous discoveries of asteroids unknown earlier led to a multiple increase in the number of information on small bodies of the Solar System. Huge volumes of information accumulated and obtained at observations of objects approaching the Earth’s orbit require storing and prompt processing, presenting more and more possibilities for studying distributions of small bodies of the Solar System and ways of their evolution. That is why development of information systems which will contain large volumes of data on small bodies of the Solar System and facilities for processing these data is actual and promising direction of activity.     

A capillary-driven root module for plant growth in microgravity.

A new capillary-driven root module design for growing plants in microgravity was developed which requires minimal external control. Unlike existing systems, the water supply to the capillary-driven system is passive and relies on root uptake and media properties to develop driving gradients which operate a suction-induced flow control valve. A collapsible reservoir supplies water to the porous membrane which functions to maintain hydraulic continuity. Sheet and tubular membranes consisting of nylon, polyester and sintered porous stainless steel were tested. While finer pore sized membranes allow greater range of operation, they also reduce liquid flux thereby constraining system efficiency. Membrane selection should consider both the maximum anticipated liquid uptake rate and maximum operating matric head (suction) of the system. Matching growth media water retention characteristics to the porous membrane characteristics is essential for supplying adequate liquid flux and gas exchange. A minimum of 10% air-filled porosity (AFP) was necessary for adequate aeration. The capillary-driven module maintained hydraulic continuity and proper gas exchange rates for more than 80 days in a plant growth experiment.     

Climate Observations - The Instrumental Record

A survey is given of the available instrumental data for monitoring and analysis of climatic variations. We focus on temperature measurements, both over land and ocean, at the surface and aloft.Over land, the older observations were subject to exposure changes which may not have been fully compensated. The effects of urbanization have been largely avoided in studies of climatic change over the last 150 years. There are few records for pre-1850 outside Europe and eastern North America, and the global network shows a recent decline. Over the ocean, sea surface temperature (SST) has been measured using buckets, engine intakes, hull sensors, buoys, and satellites. Many of these data have been effectively homogenized, but new challenges arise as observing systems evolve. Available SST and marine air temperature datasets begin in the 1850s. The data are concentrated in shipping lanes especially before 1900, and very sparse during the world wars, but additional historical data are being digitized.The radiosonde record is short (40 years) and has major gaps over the oceans, tropics and Southern Hemisphere. Instrumental heterogeneities are beginning to be assessed and removed using physical and statistical techniques. The MSU record is complete but only began in 1979, and is not highly resolved in the vertical: major biases, mainly affecting the lower-tropospheric retrieval, have been reduced as a result of recent analyses.Advanced interpolation or data-assimilation techniques are being applied to these data, but the results must be interpreted with care.     

Chemistry of the outer solar system

Data on the composition of the satellites of the outer planets and the composition and structure of planetary atmospheres are briefly reviewed in light of simple models for the origin of the solar system and the planets. Some crucial tests of present theories are suggested.Contribution No. 52 of the MIT Planetary Astronomy Laboratory.This is one of the publications by the Science Advisory Group.     

罗-罗在A3XX发动机竞争中首战告捷

在Ａ３ＸＸ的发动机竞争中,英国罗－罗公司的遄达９００选用于新加坡航空公司订购的Ａ３ＸＸ     

ERS-1 radial position refinement by dual crossover analysis with TOPEX/Poseidon

Achieving orbital accuracies in the radial direction for ERS-1 commensurate with those for TOPEX/Poseidon is of utmost importance for the integration of the two altimeter data sets. This paper outlines a procedure whereby the radial orbit error for ERS-1 is recovered as a time series expansion in the form of a finite Fourier series with additional terms for atmospheric drag, solar radiation pressure, and initial state vector mismodelling. Using a least squares collocation method with constraints derived from the JGM2 gravity field co-variance matrix, the radial error is recovered using both dual crossovers and ERS-1 single satellite crossovers. Aggregate arcs are then used to derive the ERS-1 orbit error over the repeat period of 35 days. The results are presented in the improvement of fit in the dual crossover, ERS-1 crossover and altimetry data sets as well as the recovery of an altimeter bias for the two satellites.     

A method for estimating parameters of K-distributed clutter

A method for estimating the parameters of K-distributed clutter when the available sample size of the data is limited is proposed. In this method, the arithmetic mean and geometric mean of the given data are used to estimate the model parameters. Expressions characterizing the performance of the proposed estimator are presented, along with some simulation results. For spiky clutter, simulations show that parameter estimates obtained from the arithmetic and geometric mean are approximately equal to the numerically evaluated maximum-likelihood (ML) estimates. The method is also used to estimate the parameter of the Weibull density