The extension of the INCL model for simulation of shielding in space

Radiation hazard for space missions is mainly due to cosmic ray protons, helium nuclei and light ions, whose energy spectrum is maximum around 1 GeV per nucleon but remains non-negligible for energies up to 15 GeV per nucleon. Nuclear reactions induced by high energy protons are often described by intranuclear cascade plus evaporation models. The attention is focused here on the Liège Intranuclear Cascade model (INCL), which has been shown to reproduce fairly well a great deal of experimental data for nucleon-induced reactions in the 200 MeV to 2 GeV range, when coupled with the ABLA evaporation-fission code. In order to extend the model to other conditions relevant for space radiation, three improvements of INCL are under development. They are reported on here. First, the reaction model has been extended to nucleon–nucleus reactions at incident energies up to 15 GeV, mainly by the inclusion of additional pion production channels in nucleon–nucleon collisions during the cascade. Second, a coalescence mechanism for the emission of light charged particles has been implemented recently. Finally, the model has been modified in order to accommodate light ions as projectiles. First results are shown and compared with illustrative experimental data. Implications for issues concerning radiation protection in space are discussed.     

Theoretical performance analysis of electrochromic radiators for space suit thermal control

Variable emissivity electrochromics have been proposed as an enabling technology for integrating a radiator capability into a space suit in order to augment or replace the traditional means of heat rejection achieved via water sublimation. Thermal analysis was performed to establish design trade spaces and to provide operational guidelines and performance specifications for electrochromic technology development. Based on using the available surface area of an entire space suit as a radiator and the projected infrared emissivity modulation capability of state-of-the-art electrochromic material, the proposed application for space suit heat rejection suggests the potential exists to reduce or eliminate reliance on water consumption for thermal control within a defined range of metabolic and environmental boundary conditions.     

A review of global satellite-derived snow products

Snow cover over the Northern Hemisphere plays a crucial role in the Earth’s hydrology and surface energy balance, and modulates feedbacks that control variations of global climate. While many of these variations are associated with exchanges of energy and mass between the land surface and the atmosphere, other expected changes are likely to propagate downstream and affect oceanic processes in coastal zones. For example, a large component of the freshwater flux into the Arctic Ocean comes from snow melt. The timing and magnitude of this flux affects biological and thermodynamic processes in the Arctic Ocean, and potentially across the globe through their impact on North Atlantic Deep Water formation.     

Locating the LCROSS Impact Craters

The Lunar CRater Observations and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission impacted a spent Centaur rocket stage into a permanently shadowed region near the lunar south pole. The Sheperding Spacecraft (SSC) separated ～9 hours before impact and performed a small braking maneuver in order to observe the Centaur impact plume, looking for evidence of water and other volatiles, before impacting itself. This paper describes the registration of imagery of the LCROSS impact region from the mid- and near-infrared cameras onboard the SSC, as well as from the Goldstone radar. We compare the Centaur impact features, positively identified in the first two, and with a consistent feature in the third, which are interpreted as a 20 m diameter crater surrounded by a 160 m diameter ejecta region. The images are registered to Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO) topographical data which allows determination of the impact location. This location is compared with the impact location derived from ground-based tracking and propagation of the spacecraft’s trajectory and with locations derived from two hybrid imagery/trajectory methods. The four methods give a weighted average Centaur impact location of ?84.6796°, ?48.7093°, with a 1σ uncertainty of 115 m along latitude, and 44 m along longitude, just 146 m from the target impact site. Meanwhile, the trajectory-derived SSC impact location is ?84.719°, ?49.61°, with a 1σ uncertainty of 3 m along the Earth vector and 75 m orthogonal to that, 766 m from the target location and 2.803 km south-west of the Centaur impact. We also detail the Centaur impact angle and SSC instrument pointing errors. Six high-level LCROSS mission requirements are shown to be met by wide margins. We hope that these results facilitate further analyses of the LCROSS experiment data and follow-up observations of the impact region.     

The role of the space industry in building capacity in emerging space nations

The space industry in established space-faring nations is playing an increasingly important role in the development of capacity in emerging space nations. The role of industry ranges from provision of turn-key systems, to provision of training and joint development of satellites in partnership with emerging space countries. Ranked number 1 worldwide in terms of satellites ordered in 2006, Thales Alenia Space is at the heart of the most high performance satellite technologies in both civil and defense sectors. The company has been involved in parterships with a number of emerging space nations. This paper discusses several key factors for successful interaction of industry with national space programmes in emerging space nations.     

The LAGEOS satellites orbit and Yukawa-like interactions

LAGEOS II general relativity pericenter precession has been analysed in terms of the errors produced by the mismodelling of both the gravitational and non-gravitational perturbations acting on the satellite orbit. The accuracy in the pericenter determination may be considered as an upper-bound value for the estimate of the strength α of a possible new-long-range-interaction described by a Yukawa-like potential. In the present work we have focused on the constraints in α that can be obtained with the current best multi-satellites gravity field model EGM96 (α < 2.6 × 10⁻¹⁰) and also with the first promising models from the CHAMP (α < 1.8 × 10⁻¹⁰) and GRACE (α < 1.2 × 10⁻¹⁰) gravimetric missions. These results represent, potentially, an improvement of two or three orders-of-magnitude with respect to the best constraints obtained in the past with Earth–LAGEOS and Lunar–LAGEOS data (|α| < 10⁻⁵–10⁻⁸). The impact of the non-gravitational perturbations mismodelling in the final error budget has been determined together with the improvements obtainable in the constraint of the strength α with the proposed LARES satellite.     

The Origin and Evolution of the Asteroid Belt��Implications for Vesta and Ceres

Vesta and Ceres are the largest members of the asteroid belt, surviving from the earliest phases of Solar System history. They formed at a time when the asteroid belt was much more massive than it is today and were witness to its dramatic evolution, where planetary embryos were formed and lost, where the collisional environment shifted from accretional to destructive, and where the current size distribution of asteroids was sculpted by mutual collisions and most of the asteroids originally present were lost by dynamical processes. Since these early times, the environment of the asteroid belt has become relatively quiescent, though over the long history of the Solar System the surfaces of Vesta and Ceres continue to record and be influenced by impacts, most notably the south polar cratering event on Vesta. As a consequence of such impacts, Vesta has contributed a significant family of asteroids to the main belt, which is the likely source of the HED meteorites on Earth. No similar contribution to the main belt (or meteorites) is evident for Ceres. Through studies of craters, the surfaces of these asteroids will offer an opportunity for Dawn to probe the modern population of small asteroids in a size regime not directly observable from Earth.     

Solar Cycle Forecasting

Predicting the behavior of a solar cycle after it is well underway (2–3 years after minimum) can be done with a fair degree of skill using auto-regression and curve fitting techniques that don’t require any knowledge of the physics involved. Predicting the amplitude of a solar cycle near, or before, the time of solar cycle minimum can be done using precursors such as geomagnetic activity and polar fields that do have some connection to the physics but the connections are uncertain and the precursors provide less reliable forecasts. Predictions for the amplitude of cycle 24 using these precursor techniques give drastically different values. Recently, dynamo models have been used directly with assimilated data to predict the amplitude of sunspot cycle 24 but have also given significantly different predictions. While others have questioned both the predictability of the solar cycle and the ability of current dynamo models to provide predictions, it is clear that cycle 24 will help to discriminate between some opposing dynamo models.     

Carbon monoxide spatial gradients over source regions as observed by SCIAMACHY: A case study for the United Kingdom

Carbon monoxide (CO) is an important air pollutant whose emissions and atmospheric concentrations need to be monitored. The measurements of the SCIAMACHY instrument on ENVISAT are sensitive to CO concentration changes at all atmospheric altitude levels including the boundary layer. The SCIAMACHY CO measurements therefore contain information on CO emissions. Until now no studies have been published where the SCIAMACHY CO measurements have been used to quantify CO emissions by applying, for example, inverse modelling approaches. Here we report about a step in this direction. We have analysed three years of CO columns to investigate if spatial gradients resulting from United Kingdom (UK) CO emissions can be observed from space. The UK is an interesting target area because the UK is a relatively well isolated CO source region. On the other hand, the UK is not the easiest target as its emissions are only moderate and because the surrounding water has low reflectivity in the 2.3 μm spectral region used for CO retrieval. We determined horizontal CO gradients from seasonally and yearly averaged CO during 2003–2005 over the UK taking into account daily wind fields. We show that the measured CO longitudinal (downwind) gradients have the expected order of magnitude. The estimated 2σ error of the gradients depends on time period and applied filtering criteria (e.g., land only, cloud free) and is typically 10–20% of the total column. The gradients are barely statistically significant within the 2σ error margin. This is mainly because of the relatively high noise of the SCIAMACHY CO measurements in combination with a quite low number of measurements (∼100) mainly due to cloud cover.     

民用直升机MRO市场减速慢行

在金融危机发生之前,航空战略咨询公司曾预计2009年国际直升机MRO市场的增长速度是3%,达到56亿美元.但考虑到目前的经济状况,2009年民用直升机的MRO市场会比2008年减少5%～10%.这主要是因为直升机的使用率在下降,以及金融危机爆发之前高企的油价所致.(本文所指的民用直升机还包括经过特殊改装后的军用和准军用直升机,但不包括武装直升机.)