A Franco–German view of Europe's ambition in space for the 21st century

Europe has at last started to integrate the assets of its broad set of actors into a comprehensive European Space Strategy. But will this first approach be ambitious enough to strengthen Europe as a global actor? In this contribution, the individuals responsible for strategy in the French and German space agencies seek an answer to this question. They do so by reviewing the historical background to European space efforts, and its role in shaping present-day activities; setting forth a vision of how Europe should proceed in space, and measuring current progress in drafting a European space strategy against this vision.     

Plasma transport during substorm growth phase and relation to breakup

For <_bi,_be, the electron and ion bounce frequencies, the response of a plasma to an externally applied electromagnetic perturbation is nonlocal. This implies, via the quasi-neutrality equation, the development of an electrostatic potential which is constant for a given magnetic field line. In the near equatorial region the corresponding potential electric field is shown to oppose the effect of the induced electric field associated with the externally applied perturbation. Thus the effect of the induced electric field is partially shielded; the total azimuthal electric field (i.e. induced plus potential) tends to be small, which explains why the radial flow velocity is slow during quasi-steady conditions prevailing during the growth phase and after the active phase. The nonlocal response of the plasma also leads to the development of a parallel current that may generate current driven Alfvén (CDA) waves, which mode convert into shear Alfvén (SA) waves. CDA/SA waves are systematically observed at early breakup; they grow very fast and produce a parallel diffusion of electrons. As soon as the diffusion time is shorter than the bounce time (_d<_b), the nonlocal response vanishes. Thus the shielding disappears, and an enhanced transport is restored at the rate fixed by the induced electric field alone. We show that fast flows effectively occur when CDA waves have enough power to diffuse electrons (over _d<_b). Electron parallel diffusion also leads to an interruption of the parallel current and therefore to a disruption of the perpendicular current.     

The Galactic Halo from Microlensing

The status of the microlensing search for galactic dark matter in the form of massive astronomical compact halo objects (machos) is reviewed. Unresolved issues are discussed, as well as possible ways to solve these.     

Public funding of space activities: a case of semantics and misdirection

The semantic ambiguity of the word ‘space’ causes problems for both the funding of space activities and the determining of space policies. The historical practice of lumping all space activities together, to be funded by a single budgetary line, is inappropriate to the range of such activities and for the economic and strategic interests at stake: it has direct consequences for the priorities governments want to make, and can pervert the directions industry is trying to go in. While continued government support for space is imperative, given the strategic, national-development nature of many of its applications, new ways must be found of allocating it a budget that take account of the diversity of the areas in which it plays a role.     

A robotic telescope network for space debris identification and tracking

The two TAROT (Télescopes à Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires; Rapid Action Telescopes for Transient Objects) installations are fully robotic optical observatories with optimized observation scheduling, data processing and archiving. Zadko is a 1 m telescope in Western Australia. The fully robotisation of the Zadko telescope has just been completed; it is now included in the TAROT network. In this paper we provide an overview of this international network of robotic optical telescopes. We discuss the advantages of using the network to participate in a satellite and space debris tracking program. This network will access almost all geostationary belt objects, and provide the first real-time satellite positioning capability. The inclusion of the 1 m Zadko telescope into the network significantly extends the efficiency and sensitivity of the existing two telescope configuration.     

New method of enhancement using wavelet transforms applied to SODISM telescope

PICARD is a space-based observatory hosting the Solar Diameter Imager and Surface Mapper (SODISM) telescope, which has continuously observed the Sun from July 2010 and up to March 2014. In order to study the fine structure of the solar surface, it is helpful to apply techniques that enhance the images so as to improve the visibility of solar features such as sunspots or faculae. The objective of this work is to develop an innovative technique to enhance the quality of the SODISM images in the five wavelengths monitored by the telescope at 215.0?nm, 393.37?nm, 535.7?nm, 607.1?nm and 782.2?nm. An enhancement technique using interpolation of the high-frequency sub-bands obtained by Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) and the input image is applied to the SODISM images. The input images are decomposed by the DWT as well as Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) into four separate sub-bands in horizontal and vertical directions namely, low-low (LL), low–high (LH), high-low (HL) and high–high (HH) frequencies. The DWT high frequency sub-bands are interpolated by a factor 2. The estimated high frequency sub-bands (edges) are enhanced by introducing an intermediate stage using a Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT), and then all these sub-bands and input image are combined and interpolated with half of the interpolation factor α/2, used to interpolate the high-frequency sub-bands, in order to reach the required size for IDWT processing. Quantitative and visual results show the superiority of the proposed technique over a bicubic image resolution enhancement technique. In addition, filling factors for sunspots are calculated from SODISM images and results are presented in this work.     

Measurement and stability of the pointing of the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter under thermal load

The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) has been selected to fly on ESA?s BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The instrument will be the first European laser altimeter designed for interplanetary flight. This paper describes the setup used to characterize the angular movements of BELA under the simulated environmental conditions that the instrument will encounter when orbiting Mercury. The system comprises a laser transmitter and a receiving telescope, which can move with respect to each other under thermal load. Tests performed using the Engineering Qualification Model show that the setup is accurate enough to characterize angular movements of the instrument components to an accuracy of ≈10 μrad. The qualification instrument is thermally stable to operate during all mission phases around Mercury proving that the transmitter and receiver sections will remain within the alignment requirements during its mission.