Impact of a novel hybrid accelerometer on satellite gravimetry performance

The state-of-the-art electrostatic accelerometers (EA) used for the retrieval of non-gravitational forces acting on a satellite constitute a core component of every dedicated gravity field mission. However, due to their difficult-to-control thermal drift in the low observation frequencies, they are also one of the most limiting factors of the achievable performance of gravity recovery. Recently, a hybrid accelerometer consisting of a regular EA and a novel cold atom interferometer (CAI) that features a time-invariant observation stability and constantly recalibrates the EA has been developed in order to remedy this major drawback. In this paper we aim to assess the value of the hybrid accelerometer for gravity field retrieval in the context of GRACE-type and Bender-type missions by means of numerical closed-loop simulations where possible noise specifications of the novel instrument are considered and different components of the Earth’s gravity field signal are added subsequently. It is shown that the quality of the gravity field solutions is mainly dependent on the CAI’s measurement accuracy. While a low CAI performance (10^?8 to 10^?9?m/s²/Hz^1/2) does not lead to any gains compared to a stand-alone EA, a sufficiently high one (10^?11?m/s²/Hz^1/2) may improve the retrieval performance by over one order of magnitude. We also show that improvements which are limited to low-frequency observations may even propagate into high spherical harmonic degrees. Further, the accelerometer performance seems to play a less prominent role if the overall observation geometry is improved as it is the case for a Bender-type mission. The impact of the accelerometer measurements diminishes further when temporal variations of the gravity field are introduced, pointing out the need for proper de-aliasing techniques. An additional study reveals that the hybrid accelerometer is – contrary to a stand-alone EA – widely unaffected by scale factor instabilities.     

The Dawn Spacecraft

The Dawn spacecraft is designed to travel to and operate in orbit around the two largest main belt asteroids, Vesta and Ceres. Developed to meet a ten-year life and fully redundant, the spacecraft accommodates an ion propulsion system, including three ion engines and xenon propellant tank, utilizes large solar arrays to power the engines, carries the science instrument payload, and hosts the hardware and software required to successfully collect and transmit the scientific data back to Earth. The launch of the Dawn spacecraft in September 2007 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was the culmination of nearly five years of design, development, integration and testing of this unique system, one of the very few scientific spacecraft to rely on ion propulsion. The Dawn spacecraft arrived at its first destination, Vesta, in July 2011, where it will conduct science operations for twelve months before departing for Ceres.     

Ultra-high performance, low-power, data parallel radar implementations

Radar involves similar operations applied to large amounts of data. It is thus well suited to data parallel (SEMD) hardware. In the past, large data-parallel machines have been applied to radar with limited success. This has been due to such reasons as programming issues, cost, and the hardware being too big for most embedded applications. Most SBVED machines went away a decade ago. There is now a new generation of SIMD COTS technology with powerful processing elements (PEs) and floating-point hardware. WorldScape is applying these chips to radar processing, and has demonstrated significantly more performance with much lower power dissipation (GFLOPS/Watt). These implementations provide attractive alternatives to traditional FPGA and DSP solutions. Lockheed-Martin has provided benchmark validation testing and support for these implementations. The current implementation is based on a 64 PE, 25 GFLOP CS-301 chip supplied by ClearSpeed Technology PLC. WorldScape has demonstrated FFT, Pulse Compression, a form of QR factorization, and other applications on this generation of hardware using a mix of C-level programming and optimized assembly. The next generation chip is compatible, but also has several improvements that will significantly enhance I/O performance as well as raw GFLOP throughput. An updated demonstration and discussion of a scalable processing platform for embedded radar processing which significantly improves I/O performance and provides a roadmap to government-qualified hardware for technology insertion. Architectures, data parallel coding approaches, additional functionality of the scalable processing platform, and relevance to embedded defense radar applications will be discussed.     

On the Radial Evolution of Alfvénic Turbulence in the Solar Wind

The observations at different solar distances and latitudes, collected in the past three decades, and the results obtained from more and more sophisticated numerical simulations allowed us to reach a good understanding on many aspects of the complex phenomenon of solar wind turbulence. Moreover, new interesting insights in the theory of turbulence have been obtained, in the past decade, from the point of view that considers a turbulent flow as a complex system, where chaotic behavior and well-established scaling laws coexist. This review aims to provide a quick overview on the state of art in this research field with particular focus on local generation mechanisms.     

The European Union as an emerging actor in space security?

With its draft Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities, the European Union has become visible in the debate on space security. In this paper we analyze this development, drawing on theoretical concepts in the scholarly debate about the ‘actorness’ of the EU. We find that the EU can be considered as an emerging actor in space security. However, the Code of Conduct initiative should be considered only a first step in this regard because it does not answer the question of whether the EU should pursue a policy of deterrence or arms control in space. We argue that the latter option would be better, because it is in line with the interests and values of the EU.     

A liquid propulsion panorama

Liquid-propellant rocket engines are widely used all over the world, thanks to their high performances, in particular high thrust-to-weight ratio. The present paper presents a general panorama of liquid propulsion as a contribution of the IAF Advanced Propulsion Prospective Group.After a brief history of its past development in the different parts of the world, the current status of liquid propulsion, the currently observed trends, the possible areas of future improvement and a summarized road map of future developments are presented. The road map includes a summary of the liquid propulsion status presented in the “Year in review 2007” of Aerospace America.Although liquid propulsion is often seen as a mature technology with few areas of potential improvement, the requirements of an active commercial market and a renewed interest for space exploration has led to the development of a family of new engines, with more design margins, simpler to use and to produce associated with a wide variety of thrust and life requirements.     

重粒子碰撞对霍尔推力器通道等离子体影响数值研究

为了研究重粒子碰撞对霍尔推力器通道等离子体影响,采用PIC/MCC/DSMC混合法对放电通道工作过程进行数值仿真研究。建立放电通道二维数值仿真模型,模型中对重粒子碰撞进行重点考虑。估算了通道内各粒子碰撞下的平均自由程,并针对重粒子碰撞单一变量开展了2个仿真模型计算,并对结果进行了对比分析及验证。结果表明:重粒子碰撞对通道内离子数密度分布影响较大,主要表现为离子数密度分布在电离区更为均匀,离子数密度峰值下降6.9%;离子轴向速度影响较小,出口处离子轴向平均速度下降1.3%。与实验结果对比验证,重粒子碰撞因素使仿真结果与测试值之间误差由9.0%缩小到7.3%。     

Semi-analytical investigations of the long term evolution of the eccentricity of Galileo and GPS-like orbits

This paper aims at investigating the stability over 150 years of a very large number of trajectories in the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) region, near the orbits devoted to radionavigation such as the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS like GPS, Glonass, Galileo, COMPASS).     

Space debris mitigation measures applied to European launchers

In November 1986, more than 20 years ago, an H8 upper stage of Ariane 1 exploded in orbit nine months after the end of its mission. So as to avoid the generation of debris in low Earth orbit, a dedicated complementary development modified the design, introducing systematic passivation of the stage. Ever since this event, space debris mitigation has been a major concern for all launcher activities in Europe.After a short recall of the launchers currently operated by Arianespace as well as those currently developed by ESA with CNES, particularly for the safeguard authority, including the most promising future evolutions, the set of applicable regulations is described. These rules are fundamentally derived from the IADC Guidelines (hence the UNCOPUOS ones), translated into European Code of Conduct and in some more applicable Standards, such as the one prepared by ESA. The process of preparing ISO standards, mainly through the ECSS Working Group, is also described.Three major families can be identified: minimization of Mission Related Objects, Passivation of stages at the end of mission, and orbital protected zones including the so-called 25-year rule.The paper describes how European launchers do or will fulfill these applicable standards, quantifying the efficiency of the mitigation rules, and describing improvement actions currently under study.