Cytogenetic studies of blood lymphocytes from cosmonauts after long-term space flights on Mir station.

Long-term space missions may increase risks of unfavorable consequences for cosmonauts as a result of radiation effects. This paper presents results of a study of cytogenetic damage in cosmonauts' peripheral blood lymphocytes induced by space radiation. Cultivation of lymphocytes and analysis of chromosomal aberrations were made according to generally accepted methods. It is shown that the yields of dicentrics and centric rings scored after long-term space flights are considerably higher than those scored prior to the flights. An attempt was made to assess individual doses received by cosmonauts. Individual biodosimetry doses received by cosmonauts who showed a reliable increase in the yields of chromosomal-type aberrations after their first flights were estimated to be from 0.02 to 0.28 Gy.     

冷轧体心立方IF钢中剪切带的形成

剪切带是在高应变时冷轧金属中形成的重要微观结构,这种微结构与塑性变形行为有密切关系。本文基于塑性变形理论,运用T ay lor弛豫模型、B ishop和H ill最大功原理,对变形体心立方晶体中滑移系上的切应变分布进行了计算。计算结果表明:当晶粒的轧制方向平行于〈1 1 2〉和轧制面法向平行于〈1 1 1〉冷轧时,几乎全部切应变都能聚集在某一滑移面上,这一高度局域性的切应变是形成剪切带的原因。此时,剪切带与轧制方向之间夹角为35°。而对其他取向的晶体,切应变却呈均匀分布,因而不产生剪切带。透射电子显微镜观察到的剪切带所在晶粒的取向和所在的滑移面证实了这一剪切带的形成机制。     

利用喷气装置卸载航天器积累角动量的最小工质损耗控制

讨论利用喷气装置卸载航天器积累的外扰角动量过程中 ,实现最小工质损耗的问题。提出了在航天器绕自己质心转动的过程中实现对这一角动量进行卸载的新思路。文中采用极大值原理求得了最优工质损耗并举出了实例     

A Method of Measuring Hydrogen Isotopes in Surface Layers of Planetary Soils by Spectroscopy of Recoil Protons in Alpha Particle Elastic Scattering

A theoretical and experimental feasibility study of possible determination of the hydrogen and deuterium concentrations in the surface layers of planetary bodies is presented. The method under study is the recoil proton and deuteron spectrometry of forward scattering in the course of elastic interaction of alpha particles with the nuclei of hydrogen isotopes. The spectra of recoil protons and deuterons were recorded using a prototype model of a hydrogen spectrometer, and these spectra were used to determine the hydrogen concentrations in the samples of different compositions.     

Six-month space greenhouse experiments--a step to creation of future biological life support systems

SVET Space Greenhouse (SG)--the first automated facility for growing of higher plants in microgravity was designed in the eighty years to be used for the future BLSS. The first successful experiment with vegetables was carried out in 1990 on the MIR Space Station (SS). The experiments in SVET SG were resumed in 1995, when an American Gas Exchange Measurement System (GEMS) was added. A three-month wheat experiment was carried out as part of MIR-SHUTTLE'95 program. SVET-2 SG Bulgarian equipment of a new generation with optimised characteristics was developed (financed by NASA). The new SVET-GEMS equipment was launched on board the MIR SS and a successful six-month experiments for growing up of two crops of wheat were conducted in 1996 - 97 as part of MIR-NASA-3 program. The first of these "Greenhouse" experiments (123 days) with the goal to grow wheat through a complete life cycle is described. Nearly 300 heads developed but no seeds were produced. A second crop of wheat was planted and after 42 days the plants were frozen for biochemical investigations. The main environmental parameters during the six-month experiments in SVET (substrate moisture and lighting period) are given. The results and the contribution to BLSS are discussed.     

The Genesis Solar Wind Concentrator: Flight and Post-Flight Conditions and Modeling of Instrumental Fractionation

The Genesis mission Solar Wind Concentrator was built to enhance fluences of solar wind by an average of 20x over the 2.3 years that the mission exposed substrates to the solar wind. The Concentrator targets survived the hard landing upon return to Earth and were used to determine the isotopic composition of solar-wind—and hence solar—oxygen and nitrogen. Here we report on the flight operation of the instrument and on simulations of its performance. Concentration and fractionation patterns obtained from simulations are given for He, Li, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Ar in SiC targets, and are compared with measured concentrations and isotope ratios for the noble gases. Carbon is also modeled for a Si target. Predicted differences in instrumental fractionation between elements are discussed. Additionally, as the Concentrator was designed only for ions ≤22 AMU, implications of analyzing elements as heavy as argon are discussed. Post-flight simulations of instrumental fractionation as a function of radial position on the targets incorporate solar-wind velocity and angular distributions measured in flight, and predict fractionation patterns for various elements and isotopes of interest. A tighter angular distribution, mostly due to better spacecraft spin stability than assumed in pre-flight modeling, results in a steeper isotopic fractionation gradient between the center and the perimeter of the targets. Using the distribution of solar-wind velocities encountered during flight, which are higher than those used in pre-flight modeling, results in elemental abundance patterns slightly less peaked at the center. Mean fractionations trend with atomic mass, with differences relative to the measured isotopes of neon of +4.1±0.9 ‰/amu for Li, between ?0.4 and +2.8 ‰/amu for C, +1.9±0.7‰/amu for N, +1.3±0.4 ‰/amu for O, ?7.5±0.4 ‰/amu for Mg, ?8.9±0.6 ‰/amu for Si, and ?22.0±0.7 ‰/amu for S (uncertainties reflect Monte Carlo statistics). The slopes of the fractionation trends depend to first order only on the relative differential mass ratio, Δm/m. This article and a companion paper (Reisenfeld et al. 2012, this issue) provide post-flight information necessary for the analysis of the Genesis solar wind samples, and thus serve to complement the Space Science Review volume, The Genesis Mission (v. 105, 2003).     

Window-Based and Rate-Based Transmission Control Mechanisms over Space-Internet Links

Space communications urgently need an effective transmission control mechanism. This paper presents an experimental, comparative analysis of window-based transmission control, rate-based transmission control, and a hybrid of the two over error-prone, congestion-free, high-latency, point-to-point space communication links simulated using the space-to-ground link simulation (SGLS) test-bed. The results revealed that the traffic shaping mechanism of rate-based transmission protocol is more effective than the bursting flow of window-based protocol over simulated space communication links with a high error rate and a long link delay. The window-based transmission mechanisms show performance degradation due to traffic bursts and frequent packet retransmissions caused by their acknowledgment (ACK)-clocked transmission control algorithms. Pure rate-control is always preferable to other mechanisms in the simulated congestion-free, error-prone, point-to-point, geostationary-Earth orbit (GEO)-space communication channels, and its advantages become more pronounced when the channel rates are asymmetric. The performance differences come from their different behavior in controlling data transmission.     

Understanding high-density matter through analysis of surface spectral lines and burst oscillations from accreting neutron stars

We discuss millisecond period brightness oscillations and surface atomic spectral lines observed during type I X-ray bursts from a neutron star in a low mass X-ray binary system. We show that modeling of these phenomena can constrain models of the dense cold matter at the cores of neutron stars. We demonstrate that, even for a broad and asymmetric spectral line, the stellar radius-to-mass ratio can be inferred to better than 5%. We also fit our theoretical models to the burst oscillation data of the low mass X-ray binary XTE J1814-338, and find that the 90% confidence lower limit of the neutron star’s dimensionless radius-to-mass ratio is 4.2.     

The radial distribution of gamma rays and cosmic rays in the outer Galaxy

The radial distribution of the high-energy (70 MeV-5 GeV) gamma-ray emissivity in the outer Milky Way is derived. The kinematics of HI are used to construct column-density maps in three galacto-centric distance ranges in the outer Galaxy. These maps are used in combination with COS-B gamma-ray data to determine gamma-ray emissivities in these distance ranges. A steep negative gradient of the emissivity for the 70 MeV-150 MeV energy range is found in the outer Galaxy. The emissivity for the 300 MeV-5 GeV range is found to be approximately constant (within 20%) and equal to the local value out to large (20 kpc) galacto-centric distances. These results imply a hardening of the gamma-ray spectrum with increrasing distance and for R > 16 kpc the spectrum is shown to be consistent with a π°-decay spectrum with the intensity expected from the local measurement of the cosmic-ray nuclei spectrum. The energy-dependent decrease is interpreted as a steep gradient in the cosmic-ray electron density and a near constancy of the nuclear component. The galactic origin of electrons with energies up to several hundreds of MeV is confirmed, while for cosmic-ray nuclei with energies of a few GeV either confinement in a large galactic halo or an extragalactic origin is suggested by the data.