Ultraviolet spectrometer experiment for the Voyager mission

The Voyager Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVS) is an objective grating spectrometer covering the wavelength range of 500–1700 Å with 10 Å resolution. Its primary goal is the determination of the composition and structure of the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and several of their satellites. The capability for two very different observational modes have been combined in a single instrument. Observations in the airglow mode measure radiation from the atmosphere due to resonant scattering of the solar flux or energetic particle bombardment, and the occultation mode provides measurements of the atmospheric extinction of solar or stellar radiation as the spacecraft enters the shadow zone behind the target. In addition to the primary goal of the solar system atmospheric measurements, the UVS is expected to make valuable contributions to stellar astronomy at wavelengths below 1000 Å.     

Defending a Moving Target Against Missile or Torpedo Attack

Problems involving kinematics of a counterweapon intercepting an attacking missile are well known. However, when the attacker's target, the counterweapon's launch platform, is moving, the problem generally becomes amenable only to trajectory simulation. Such may be the case in defense against torpedo attack against a ship and other situations involving the use of antimissile missiles. This paper derives the kinematic relations among the three bodies (missile, target, and counterweapon) in closed form under the asymptotic approximation of constant-bearing trajectories (collision courses). It is shown that the defending target, even if moving, can still determine the optimum course for its counterweapon when range and speed of the attacking vehicle are unknown. A simple relation is derived for the ratio between the attacker-target range (and time to impact) at counterweapon launch and the range at interception of the attacker by the counterweapon. Normalized curves are presented for some representative cases of defense by a counterweapon of known speed against a torpedo or missile attack on a moving target. The equations are shown to reduce to the familiar form for a stationary target.     

A survey of the outer planets Jupiter,Saturn, Uranus,Neptune, Pluto,and their satellites

A survey of current knowledge about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and their satellites is presented. The best available numerical values are given for physical parameters, including orbital and body properties, atmospheric composition and structure, and photometric parameters. The more acceptable current theories of these bodies are outlined with thorough referencing offering access to the details. The survey attempts to cover the literature through May 1, 1972. Prepared Under Contract No. NAS7-100 National Aeronautics and Space Administration.     

Adaptive cancellation method for geometry-induced nonstationary bistatic clutter environments

This paper describes and characterizes a new bistatic space-time adaptive processing (STAP) clutter mitigation method. The approach involves estimating and compensating aspects of the spatially varying bistatic clutter response in both angle and Doppler prior to adaptive clutter suppression. An important feature of the proposed method is its ability to extract requisite implementation information from the data itself, rather than rely on ancillary - and possibly erroneous or missing - system measurements. We justify the essence of the proposed method by showing its ability to align the dominant clutter subspaces of each range realization relative to a suitably chosen reference point as a means of homogenizing the space-time data set. Moreover, we numerically characterize performance using synthetic bistatic clutter data. For the examples considered herein, the proposed bistatic STAP method leads to maximum performance improvements between 17.25 dB and 20.75 dB relative to traditional STAP application, with average improvements of 6 dB to 10 dB.     

Search radar detection and track with the Hough transform. II.detection statistics

For pt.I see ibid., vol.30, no.1, (Jan.1994). This paper describes the calculation of P_F and P_D for the Hough transform technique when the primary threshold crossings are weighted by their power before transforming (i.e., noncoherent integration). After expressions for P_F and P_D are derived, we examine the question of optimal granularity of the Hough accumulator space. We also investigate the relationship between primary and secondary thresholds and its effect on detectability     

The problem with aviation COTS

Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) has become a byword for acquisition reform, but there are significant risks associated with the use of COTS products in military systems. These risks are especially acute for aviation systems. This paper explains how COTS can negatively affect military acquisitions and gives ideas on how to plan and resolve COTS caused problems     

Analysis of single-platform passive emitter location with terraindata

Frequency measurements made at a moving platform can be used to locate an emitter. An error ellipsoid analysis is used to compare the performance under three levels of a priori information on the emitter's altitude: (1) no knowledge, (2) terrain data, and (3) complete knowledge of the emitter's altitude. The analysis is performed for two simple platform paths that provide frequency measurements that are approximately time reversed versions of one another. When no a priori knowledge is available there is little difference between the performance when the platform maneuvers on a concave circular path or on a convex circular path and the performance depends very Little on the platform altitude. However, when some a priori altitude information is available the performance is markedly different on the two paths and is highly dependent on the platform altitude. Thus, this analysis provides the unexpected result that for seemingly similar platform paths, the performance can vary markedly when the emitter altitude is assumed known. Also, an interesting result is that for some cases it is possible to achieve better x-y accuracy when using terrain data than when the emitter's z location is known, because the terrain data provides terrain slope information. These cases are characterized in terms of the terrain slope at the emitter     

Langmuir Turbulence and Solar Radio Bursts

Langmuir waves and turbulence resulting from an electron beam-plasma instability play a fundamental role in the generation of solar radio bursts. We report recent theoretical advances in nonlinear dynamics of Langmuir waves. First, starting from the generalized Zakharov equations, we study the parametric excitation of solar radio bursts at the fundamental plasma frequency driven by a pair of oppositely propagating Langmuir waves with different wave amplitudes. Next, we briefly discuss the emergence of chaos in the Zakharov equations. We point out that chaos can lead to turbulence in the source regions of solar radio emissions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.