Control-structure interaction study of the proposed space station freedom

A relatively general formulation for studying the dynamics and control of an arbitrary spacecraft with interconnected flexible bodies has been developed accounting for transient system properties, shift in the center of mass, shear deformations, rotary inertias and geometric nonlinearities. This self-contained, comprehensive, numerical algorithm using system modes is applicable to a large class of spacecraft configurations of contemporary and future interests. Here, versatility of the approach is demonstrated through the dynamics and control studies aimed at the evolving Space Station Freedom.     

Educating Europe - finding the best way

The subject of space education is attracting increasing attention, but there are diverging views as to how it should be approached, as can be seen from the following two reports of Education Remote Sensing '92, a conference held in Cardiff, Wales, 28–30 June 1992.     

Reconstituting the US space programme

This response to Alex Roland's article, ‘Priorities in space for the USA’, argues that his analysis and conclusions are based on shaky historical evidence. Professor Roland's interpretation of NASA's priorities since 1959 is challenged, and it is pointed out that the manned spaceflight programme has widespread support in the USA. The most important issue, raised by the article but not treated extensively enough, is whether the pursuit of the widely accepted emphasis on manned spaceflight is a large-scale societal mistake.     

Modeling visuospatial reasoning

I apply my proposed modification of Soar/Spatial/Visual System and Kosslyn’s (1983) computational operations on images to problems within a 2 × 2 taxonomy that classifies research according to whether the coding involves static or dynamic relations within an object or between objects (Newcombe & Shipley, 2015). I then repeat this analysis for problems that are included in mathematics and science curricula. Because many of these problems involve reasoning from diagrams Hegarty’s (2011) framework for reasoning from visual-spatial displays provides additional support for organizing this topic. Two more relevant frameworks specify reasoning at different levels of abstraction (Reed, 2016) and with different combinations of actions and objects (Reed, 2018). The article concludes with suggestions for future directions.     

Which way is the bookstore? A closer look at the judgments of relative directions task

We present a detailed analysis of a widely used assay in human spatial cognition, the judgments of relative direction (JRD) task. We conducted three experiments involving virtual navigation interspersed with the JRD task, and included confidence judgments and map drawing as additional metrics. We also present a technique for assessing the similarity of the cognitive representations underlying performance on the JRD and map-drawing tasks. Our results support the construct validity of the JRD task and its connection to allocentric representation. Additionally, we found that chance performance on the JRD task depends on the distribution of the angles of participants’ responses, rather than being constant and 90 degrees. Accordingly, we present a method for better determining chance performance.     

On the Origin of High-Latitude Boundary Layer of the Earth's Magnetosphere

Localization of the reconnection region at the dayside magnetopause is among the unsolved problems of magnetospheric physics. There are two alternative models, one of which predicts the reconnection at the equatorial magnetopause, and the other predicts the reconnection in the region where the magnetic field of the solar wind flowing around the magnetosphere is antiparallel to the geomagnetic field. The statistical analysis carried out for 53 INTERBALL-1crossings of the high-latitude magnetopause in a special coordinate frame invariant with respect to the interplanetary conditions shows that the model of a reconnection in antiparallel fields agrees well with the experimental data.     

Modelling of Ejecta as a Space Debris Source

When a micro-debris or a micrometeoroid impacts a spacecraft surface, a large number of secondary particles, called ejecta, are produced. These particles can contribute to a modification of the debris environment: either locally by the occurrence of secondary impacts on the components of complex and large space structures, or at great distance by the formation of a population of small orbital debris. This paper describes firstly, the ejecta overall production, and secondly, the lifetime and the orbital evolution of the particles. Finally the repartition of ejecta in LEO is computed. Some results describing the population as a function of size and altitude are presented.     

Beam-Park-Experiment-1/2000 with TIRA

A monostatic 24-h debris observation campaign (BPE-1/2000) has been prepared and conducted using FGAN's TIRA L-Band system. Based on experiences from previous Beam-park experiments a similar largely automated data processing is applied on an extended range window of 300–2000km. More than 1500 detections are encountered, 471 of them are verified as being real objects in Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO). PROOF's observation forecasting of catalogued objects is evaluated against the observed objects, and the difficulties obtaining radar cross-sections (RCSs) and object sizes from Beam-park experiments are discussed. Sidelobe detections are identified by using background information like two-line element (TLE) sets and/or catalogued RCSs.In comparison with previous experiments, the statistics show similarities confirming the concept of Beam-park experiments for space debris observations, despite the snapshot character of 24-h experiments. The comparison with MASTER/PROOF'99 and ORDEM2000 leads to a reasonable agreement between models and observations.     

Numerical Simulation of Impact Loading on Solid Propellant Within an Orthotropic Shell

The strain–stress state of the solid propellant rocket engines (SPREs) is simulated under impact. The effect of orientation of elastic and strength properties of orthotropic organoplastic shell material on the strain–stress state of the solid propellant is investigated. Normal and oblique impact of single steel cylinder projectiles, both simultaneous and at different times of multiple, converging steel spheric particles with SPRE are investigated in this study. The investigation is conducted numerically. The numerical modeling was carried out in a three-dimensional formulation by the method of finite elements for the continuous approach of the mechanics of a deformable solid. The destruction of the anisotropic material is described by the tensor-polynomial criterion of the fourth degree, which takes into account the influence of hydrostatic pressure.