Prototype design and testing of a Venus long duration,high altitude balloon

This paper describes the design, fabrication and testing of a full scale prototype balloon intended for long duration flight in the upper atmosphere of Venus. The balloon is 5.5 m in diameter and is designed to carry a 45 kg payload at an altitude of 55 km. The balloon material is a 180 g/m² multi-component laminate comprised of the following layers bonded together from outside to inside: aluminized Teflon film, aluminized Mylar film, Vectran fabric and a polyurethane coating. This construction provides the required balloon functional characteristics of low gas permeability, sulfuric acid resistance and high strength for superpressure operation. The design burst superpressure is 39,200 Pa which is predicted to be 3.3 times the worst case value expected during flight at the highest solar irradiance in the mission profile. The prototype is constructed from 16 gores with bi-taped seams employing a sulfuric acid resistant adhesive on the outside. Material coupon tests were performed to evaluate the optical and mechanical characteristics of the laminate. These were followed by full prototype tests for inflation, leakage and sulfuric acid tolerance. The results confirmed the suitability of this balloon design for use at Venus in a long duration mission. The various data are presented and the implications for mission design and operation are discussed.     

A Nominator-Selector Two-Stage Signal Detection Scheme

A two-stage approach to computationally efficient signal detection is to nominate candidate signal vectors using a suboptimal, but computationally cheap, detection scheme, and subsequently perform optimal detection on the candidates. Bounds on the detection performance of this approach are presented along with sufficient conditions for optimality. Examples are presented of an optimal and nearly optimal two-stage detection scheme where computational costs are drastically reduced relative to the singli-stage optimal detector.     

Solar modulation model with reentrant particles

We developed a one dimensional model of particle transport in the heliosphere. As opposite to widely used models, we apply a method where a quasi-particle is traced back in time. The model gives us the possibility to work on the possible existence of reentrant particles in the heliosphere that can be hardly solved by the traditional forward tracking method. Particles escape from the heliosphere and may reenter back. We estimate how these particles affect the modulation process in the heliosphere. Presented here are the results for different values of particles mean free path in the interstellar space and for different interstellar magnetic field values.     

“Modular Biospheres” – New testbed platforms for public environmental education and research

This paper will review the potential of a relatively new type of testbed platform for environmental education and research because of the unique advantages resulting from their material closure and separation from the outside environment. These facilities which we term “modular biospheres”, have emerged from research centered on space life support research but offer a wider range of application. Examples of this type of facility include the Bios-3 facility in Russia, the Japanese CEEF (Closed Ecological Experiment Facility), the NASA Kennedy Space Center Breadboard facility, the Biosphere 2 Test Module and the Laboratory Biosphere. Modular biosphere facilities offer unique research and public real-time science education opportunities. Ecosystem behavior can be studied since initial state conditions can be precisely specified and tracked over different ranges of time. With material closure (apart from very small air exchange rate which can be determined), biogeochemical cycles between soil and soil microorganisms, water, plants, and atmosphere can be studied in detail. Such studies offer a major advance from studies conducted with phytotrons which because of their small size, limit the number of organisms to a very small number, and which crucially do not have a high degree of atmospheric, water and overall material closure. Modular biospheres take advantage of the unique properties of closure, as representing a distinct system “metabolism” and therefore are essentially a “mini-world”. Though relatively large in comparison with most phytotrons and ecological microcosms, which are now standard research and educational tools, modular biospheres are small enough that they can be economically reconfigured to reflect a changing research agenda. Some design elements include lighting via electric lights and/or sunlight, hydroponic or soil substrate for plants, opaque or glazed structures, and variable volume chambers or other methods to handle atmospheric pressure differences between the facility and the outside environment.     

Changes in plant medium composition after a spaceflight experiment: Potassium levels are of special interest

We present results on the analysis of 100 mL medium samples extracted from sterilized foam (Smithers-Oasis, Kent OH) used to support the growth of a representative dicotyledon (Haplopappus gracilis) and a representative monocotyledon (Hemerocallis cv Autumn Blaze) in NASA’s Plant Growth Unit (PGU) during a 5-day Space Shuttle flight and ground experiments. At recovery, the media remaining within replicate (n = 5) foam blocks (for both the spaceflight and ground experiments) were extracted under vacuum, filtered and subjected to elemental analyses. A unique aspect of this experiment was that all plants were either aseptically-generated tissue culture propagated plantlets or aseptic seedling clones. The design of the PGU facilitated the maintenance of asepsis throughout the mission (confirmed by post-flight microbial sampling) and thus any possible impact of microorganisms on medium composition was eliminated. Concentration levels of some elements remained the same, while some decreased and others increased. There was a significant two-fold difference between the final concentrations of potassium when the Earth-based and microgravity experiments were contrasted.     

Application of SVM on satellite images to detect hotspots in Jharia coal field region of India

The present paper deals with the application of Support Vector Machine (SVM) and image analysis techniques on NOAA/AVHRR satellite image to detect hotspots on the Jharia coal field region of India. One of the major advantages of using these satellite data is that the data are free with very good temporal resolution; while, one drawback is that these have low spatial resolution (i.e., approximately 1.1 km at nadir). Therefore, it is important to do research by applying some efficient optimization techniques along with the image analysis techniques to rectify these drawbacks and use satellite images for efficient hotspot detection and monitoring. For this purpose, SVM and multi-threshold techniques are explored for hotspot detection. The multi-threshold algorithm is developed to remove the cloud coverage from the land coverage. This algorithm also highlights the hotspots or fire spots in the suspected regions. SVM has the advantage over multi-thresholding technique that it can learn patterns from the examples and therefore is used to optimize the performance by removing the false points which are highlighted in the threshold technique. Both approaches can be used separately or in combination depending on the size of the image. The RBF (Radial Basis Function) kernel is used in training of three sets of inputs: brightness temperature of channel 3, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Global Environment Monitoring Index (GEMI), respectively. This makes a classified image in the output that highlights the hotspot and non-hotspot pixels. The performance of the SVM is also compared with the performance obtained from the neural networks and SVM appears to detect hotspots more accurately (greater than 91% classification accuracy) with lesser false alarm rate. The results obtained are found to be in good agreement with the ground based observations of the hotspots. This type of work will be quite helpful in the near future to develop a hotspots monitoring system using these operational satellites data.     

Amplitude modulation of VLF emission and absorption of cosmic noise by <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pc</Emphasis>5 geomagnetic pulsations in the period of geomagnetic storms on October 30–31, 2003

Modulation of the VLF emission and riometric absorption by Pc5 geomagnetic pulsations is studied in the period of strong geomagnetic disturbances on October 30–31, 2003. Some conclusions about the regime of pitch-angular diffusion into the loss cone are made. The better coincidence of VLF emission modulation with geomagnetic pulsations in other longitude sectors is explained by the global character of excitation of the pulsations and by damping of their amplitudes at the meridian of observation of the VLF emission, which is associated with intensification of auroral electrojets.Translated from Kosmicheskie Issledovaniya, Vol. 42, No. 6, 2004, pp. 632–639.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Solovyev, Mullayarov, Baishev, Barkova, Samsonov.     

Fifty Years of Cosmic Radiation Data

Cosmic radiation has been measured by a variety of techniques since 1933. This paper presents the evolution of data acquisition, processing, and availability of cosmic radiation data from the early years to the present time. Information on the worldwide network of neutron monitor stations and the availability of these cosmic radiation records is included. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Space Weather applications with CDPP/AMDA

AMDA (Automated Multi-Dataset Analysis), a new data analysis service, recently opened at the French Plasma Physics Data Center (CDPP). AMDA is developed according to the Virtual Observatory paradigm: it is a web-based facility for on-line analyses of space physics. Data may come from its own local database as well as remote ones. This tool allows the user to perform classical manipulations such as data visualization, parameter computation and data extraction. AMDA also offers innovative functionalities such as event searches on the content of the data in either visual or automated ways, generation, use and management of time tables (event lists). The general functionalities of AMDA are presented in the context of Space Weather with example scientific use cases.     

Analysis of static loading of a helicopter tubular skid landing gear

A three-dimensional design model of a helicopter tubular skid landing gear based on the application of the large beam displacement theory is presented. The design model takes into account special features of constructive, physical and geometrical deformation nonlinearity. The analysis of a real helicopter structure is given that confirms sufficient validity of calculation results obtained using the model developed by comparing with the results of the finite element analysis.