Weapons System Open Architecture - a bridge between "embedded" and "off-board"

A demonstration program is described: Weapons System Open Architecture (WSOA) - funded jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), DARPA, and the Open Systems Joint Task Force (OSJTF). WSOA provides an open systems "bridge" between legacy embedded mission systems and off-board C3I sources and systems. This "bridge" is used to support Internet-like connectivity between command and attack nodes. The foundation of this bridge is the creation of a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) layer over Link 16. In addition, application of quality of service techniques and resource management technologies will ensure the timely exchange and processing of mission critical information by both attack and command nodes in even the most time-sensitive situations.     

Enhanced space integrated GPS/INS (SIGI)

Safe, reliable, and low cost space-based navigation is being provided with embedded INS/GPS systems such as the space integrated GPS/INS (SIGI). The SIGI is being used for various space vehicle applications such as launch vehicles, orbital vehicles, and re-entry vehicles. This paper describes current space vehicle navigation capabilities. The SIGI is being enhanced to provide additions to these existing capabilities with such items as higher processing and a commercial-off-the-shelf operating system. This will allow hosting of various software applications such as advanced navigation functions, flight control, guidance and vehicle management algorithms. The SIGI can host redundancy management functions by incorporating a cross channel data link card (CCDL) using a high speed firewire bus. The SIGI can then be used as a redundancy management platform which has application to current space vehicle avionics topologies incorporating distributed processing architectures     

Radiation measurements aboard NASA ER-2 high altitude aircraft with the Liulin-4J portable spectrometer.

The risks to aircrew health posed by prolonged exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation at aircraft altitudes have recently received renewed attention. Civil and military aircraft currently on the drawing board are expected to operate at higher altitudes (>12 km) and fly longer ranges than do existing aircraft, thereby exposing their crews to higher levels of ionizing radiation, for longer periods of time. We are currently carrying out dosimetric measurements of the ionizing radiation environment at approximately 20 km altitude using portable Si detectors aboard NASA's two ER-2 high altitude research aircraft. The instruments, Liulin-4J, have been extensively calibrated at several particle accelerators. With these instruments, we can measure not only absorbed dose, but also variation of the absorbed dose as a function of time. We report radiation dose measurements as function of time, altitude, and latitude for several ER-2 missions.     

High resolution time profile of decimetric type-III bursts

Type-III bursts are signatures of the electron beams accelerated during the solar flares, their observation and investigation provide information of the acceleration processes, the characteristics of the exciting agent and the acceleration site. The Brazilian Solar Spectroscope (BSS), in operation at INPE, Brazil, have recorded type-III radio bursts in decimetric range (2050–2250 MHz) with high time resolution of 20 ms. Decimetric reverse drift bursts are possibly generated in a dense loop by electron beams travelling towards the photosphere. Hence their time profiles should carry signatures of the density inhomogenities in the loop. Here the temporal and spectral characteristics of decimetric type-III bursts are presented.     

Atmospheric dynamics in the "Laboratory Biosphere" with wheat and sweet potato crops.

Laboratory Biosphere is a 40-m3 closed life system equipped with 12,000 W of high pressure sodium lamps over planting beds with 5.37 m2 of soil. Atmospheric composition changes due to photosynthetic fixation of carbon dioxide and corresponding production of oxygen or the reverse, respiration, are observed in short timeframes, e.g., hourly. To focus on inherent characteristics of the crop as distinct from its area or the volume of the chamber, we report fixation and respiration rates in mmol h-1 m-2 of planted area. An 85-day crop of USU Apogee wheat under a 16-h lighted/8-h dark regime peaked in fixation rate at about 100 mmol h-1 m-2 approximately 24 days after planting. Light intensity was about 840 micromoles m-2 s-1. Dark respiration peaked at about 31 mmol h-1 m-2 at the same time. Thereafter, both fixation and respiration declined toward zero as harvest time approached. A residual soil respiration rate of about 1.9 mmol h-1 m-2 was observed in the dark closed chamber for 100 days after the harvest. A 126-day crop of Tuskegee TU-82-155 sweet potato behaved quite differently. Under a 680 micromoles m-2 s-1, 18-h lighted/6-h dark regime, fixation during lighted hours rose to a plateau ranging from about 27 to 48 mmol h-1 m-2 after 42 days and dark respiration settled into a range of 12-23 mmol h-1 m-2. These rates continued unabated until the harvest at 126 days, suggesting that tuber biomass production might have continued at about the same rate for some time beyond the harvest time that was exercised in this experiment. In both experiments CO2 levels were allowed to range widely from a few hundred to about 3000 ppm, which permitted observation of fixation rates both at varying CO2 concentrations and at each number of days after planting. This enables plotting the fixation rate as a function of both variables. Understanding the atmospheric dynamics of individual crops will be essential for design and atmospheric management of more complex CELSS which integrate the simultaneous growth of several crops as in a sustainable remote life support system.     

Ultra triple-junction high-efficiency solar cells

Solar cells suitable for the space environment must combine high-efficiency, high energy density, and radiation hardness in a manufacturable design. As improvement in one performance parameter usually results in degradation in one or more of the remaining parameters, careful optimization is required to enhance overall performance. The ultra triple-junction cell developed builds upon the established success of the fully qualified improved triple-junction cell currently in production. In the ultra triple-junction cell configuration, improved robustness and efficiency after radiation exposure augment a cell design expected to deliver 28% beginning-of-life efficiency in production.     

Complexity,Forced and/or Self-Organized Criticality,and Topological Phase Transitions in Space Plasmas

The first definitive observation that provided convincing evidence indicating certain turbulent space plasma processes are in states of ‘complexity’ was the discovery of the apparent power-law probability distribution of solar flare intensities. Recent statistical studies of complexity in space plasmas came from the AE index, UVI auroral imagery, and in-situ measurements related to the dynamics of the plasma sheet in the Earth's magnetotail and the auroral zone. In this review, we describe a theory of dynamical ‘complexity’ for space plasma systems far from equilibrium. We demonstrate that the sporadic and localized interactions of magnetic coherent structures are the origin of ‘complexity’ in space plasmas. Such interactions generate the anomalous diffusion, transport, acceleration, and evolution of the macroscopic states of the overall dynamical systems. Several illustrative examples are considered. These include: the dynamical multi- and cross-scale interactions of the macro-and kinetic coherent structures in a sheared magnetic field geometry, the preferential acceleration of the bursty bulk flows in the plasma sheet, and the onset of ‘fluctuation induced nonlinear instabilities’ that can lead to magnetic reconfigurations. The technique of dynamical renormalization group is introduced and applied to the study of two-dimensional intermittent MHD fluctuations and an analogous modified forest-fire model exhibiting forced and/or self-organized criticality [FSOC] and other types of topological phase transitions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Principal components, covariance matrix tapers, and the subspaceleakage problem

A new class of robust space-time adaptive beamforming techniques is introduced to address a broad range of subspace leakage phenomena that arise in many sensor array applications. When present, these leakage phenomena can significantly increase the effective rank of the dominant colored noise interference spectrum, thereby reducing the appeal of techniques that exploit low-rank dominant interference (such as principal components (PC) or diagonal loading) to reduce sample support (training) requirements. By combining the covariance matrix taper (CMT) approach with either PC or diagonal loading, the minimal sample support properties of these techniques can be preserved