A gas management system for an ultra long duration Titan blimp

This paper presents analyses, designs and experimental results for the gas management system of a hydrogen-filled blimp capable of flying in the lower atmosphere of Titan for a period of 1 year or more. The engineering strategy has two basic elements: first, to minimize leakage rates from the blimp envelope and ballonets; and second, to provide auxiliary subsystems to mitigate the life-limiting effects resulting from those leaks. Leak minimization is achieved through use of cryogenically compatible balloon materials and adhesives, and selection of ballonet geometries that minimize pinhole generation via folding and material fatigue. Hydrogen loss to the environment through leaks in the blimp envelope is compensated by producing new hydrogen through chemical processing of atmospheric methane. Nitrogen leaked into the blimp from the ballonets is removed by a carbon absorption system and periodically vented to the atmosphere. Data is presented on the measured leak rate from a full scale (13 m long) prototype blimp envelope and on the performance of a low mass, low power prototype device that generates hydrogen from methane. These results are factored in to an overall system design that quantifies the mass and power requirements for a minimum 1 year operational lifetime.     

Analysis of Regolith Properties Using Seismic Signals Generated by InSight’s HP<Superscript>3</Superscript> Penetrator

InSight’s Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) provides a unique and unprecedented opportunity to conduct the first geotechnical survey of the Martian soil by taking advantage of the repeated seismic signals that will be generated by the mole of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³). Knowledge of the elastic properties of the Martian regolith have implications to material strength and can constrain models of water content, and provide context to geological processes and history that have acted on the landing site in western Elysium Planitia. Moreover, it will help to reduce travel-time errors introduced into the analysis of seismic data due to poor knowledge of the shallow subsurface. The challenge faced by the InSight team is to overcome the limited temporal resolution of the sharp hammer signals, which have significantly higher frequency content than the SEIS 100 Hz sampling rate. Fortunately, since the mole propagates at a rate of \(\sim1~\mbox{mm}\) per stroke down to 5 m depth, we anticipate thousands of seismic signals, which will vary very gradually as the mole travels.Using a combination of field measurements and modeling we simulate a seismic data set that mimics the InSight HP3-SEIS scenario, and the resolution of the InSight seismometer data. We demonstrate that the direct signal, and more importantly an anticipated reflected signal from the interface between the bottom of the regolith layer and an underlying lava flow, are likely to be observed both by Insight’s Very Broad Band (VBB) seismometer and Short Period (SP) seismometer. We have outlined several strategies to increase the signal temporal resolution using the multitude of hammer stroke and internal timing information to stack and interpolate multiple signals, and demonstrated that in spite of the low resolution, the key parameters—seismic velocities and regolith depth—can be retrieved with a high degree of confidence.     

The Shape of Doppler Spectra from Precipitation

From October 1982 through May 1983 an extensive weather clutter registration program was executed near the Dutch coast. Coherent echo series of 2 s were obtained from a cluster of adjacent antenna pencil beams every 10 or 15 min., mainly between 16:00 and 08:30 h and on the weekends. The beam cluster was pointed toward the intensity maximum of the clutter volume. The radar operated at 5650 MHz. Spectra with 10 Hz Doppler resolution have been computed by averaging over 19 discrete Fourier transforms of overlapping and tapered subseries of 200 echo vectors. To quantify the deviation from a Gaussian shape a spectral variability is defined which is computed for every estimated spectrum. It is found that the deviation from Gaussian is considerable in about one-fourth of the spectra. A selection of "typical worst case" spectra is presented.     

Digital Control of High Performance Aircraft Using Adaptive Estimation Techniques

Since the early 1960's, a rapid advance in signal processing, including filtering and estimation techniques, has been evident. In contrast, applied feedback control, particularly for aircraft, is currently based on technology available prior to 1960, i. e., primarily either constant gain feedback or at most a standard gain-scheduling. In this paper, an adaptive signal processing algorithm is joined with gain-scheduling to produce an effective scheme for controlling the dynamics of high performance aircraft. A technique is presented for a reduced-order model (the longitudinal dynamics) of a high performance short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) aircraft. The actual controller views the nonlinear behavior of the aircraft as being equivalent to a randomly switching sequence of linear models taken from a preliminary piecewise-linear fit of the system nonlinearities. The adaptive nature of the estimator is necessary to select the proper sequence of linear models along the flight trajectory. From the analysis of the reduced-order model the nonlinear behavior has been found to be well approximated by assuming an effective switching of the linear models at random times, the durations of which reflect the motion of the aircraft in response to pilot commands.     

The COS-B X-ray observations of X-ray binaries

The observational information on X-ray binaries that was collected with the 80 cm² auxiliary X-ray detector onboard the COS-B gamma-ray satellite is reviewed. The results illustrate that in the study of X-ray binaries observations of long duration are extremely effective, even when using a small instrument.     

Mercury’s Interior Structure, Rotation, and Tides

This review addresses the deep interior structure of Mercury. Mercury is thought to consist of similar chemical reservoirs (core, mantle, crust) as the other terrestrial planets, but with a relatively much larger core. Constraints on Mercury’s composition and internal structure are reviewed, and possible interior models are described. Large advances in our knowledge of Mercury’s interior are not only expected from imaging of characteristic surface features but particularly from geodetic observations of the gravity field, the rotation, and the tides of Mercury. The low-degree gravity field of Mercury gives information on the differences of the principal moments of inertia, which are a measure of the mass concentration toward the center of the planet. Mercury’s unique rotation presents several clues to the deep interior. From observations of the mean obliquity of Mercury and the low-degree gravity data, the moments of inertia can be obtained, and deviations from the mean rotation speed (librations) offer an exciting possibility to determine the moment of inertia of the mantle. Due to its proximity to the Sun, Mercury has the largest tides of the Solar System planets. Since tides are sensitive to the existence and location of liquid layers, tidal observations are ideally suited to study the physical state and size of the core of Mercury.