Radar-assisted collision avoidance/guidance strategy for planarflight

We propose a radar-assisted collision avoidance/guidance strategy (RACAGS) for flight vehicles on low altitude missions. The task of obstacle avoidance and guidance are integrated in a single collision avoidance/guidance strategy. The avionic aids and computational requirements are modest as the strategy mainly depends on range-map and inertial system information. The strategy is first implemented in a planar scenario and then extended to three-dimensional and nominal trajectory following flight scenarios. Several simulation studies are presented for illustration     

A New Population of the Cusp Suprathermal Protons Formed at Mid-Altitudes: INTERBALL-2 Measurements

A new population of dispersed suprathermal ions descending into the ionosphere is discovered in the cusp region from theINTERBALL-2 measurements at altitudes of 2–3R _E. The proton energies of the population are below the low energy cut-off of the main dispersed proton population of the magnetosheath origin, and its intensity and density are also much lower. For IMF B _z 2 nT the region of the population observations is located partly coincident with (or sometimes poleward from) the main proton population of the cusp proper. The pitch-angle velocity dispersion in the population during a 2-min satellite rotation manifests itself as a typical pitch-angle V together with a velocity dispersion due to poleward convection. The satellite passes chosen for the detailed analysis and modeling lay approximately along the cusp/cleft band from afternoon till prenoon MLT sectors, thus emphasizing the pitch-angle dispersion role with respect to the dispersion due to convection. This allows one to observe the suprathermal proton population during several tens of minutes over the MLT range of 3 h around noon, i.e., similarly to the MLT extension of the cusp proper. A remarkable space/time stability of this new population is due to its low velocity (tens of km/s) and/or velocity diffusion in the flux tubes of the cusp proper. We have performed both backward tracing of proton trajectories in the Tsyganenko-96 model, and kinetic modeling of the kinematic variations of the distribution function for protons along their way from the bi-Maxwellian source in the form of a heating wall till the satellite. The parameters of the model were adjusted to the observed energy–time spectrograms. They consistently indicate the origin of the descending suprathermal proton population at intermediate altitudes of 5R _E, i.e., within cusp flux tubes but well below the magnetopause. Some published measurements from the POLAR satellite in the cusp region at altitudes of 4–5R _E seem to be consistent with the supposition of crossing the source region of this population, variable in space and time (though these measurements were interpreted in a different manner).     

Viability of barley seeds after long-term exposure to outer side of international space station

Barley seeds were exposed to outer space for 13 months in a vented metal container without a climate control system to assess the risk of physiological and genetic mutation during long-term storage in space. The space-stored seeds (S0 generation), with an 82% germination rate in 50 seeds, lost about 20% of their weight after the exposure. The germinated seeds showed normal growth, heading, and ripening. The harvested seeds (S1 generation) also germinated and reproduced (S2 generation) as did the ground-stored seeds. The culm length, ear length, number of seed, grain weight, and fertility of the plants from the space-stored seeds were not significantly different from those of the ground-stored seeds in each of the S0 and S1 generation. Furthermore, the S1 and S2 space-stored seeds respectively showed similar β-glucan content to those of the ground-stored seeds. Amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis with 16 primer combinations showed no specific fragment that appears or disappears significantly in the DNA isolated from the barley grown from the space-stored seeds. Though these data are derived from nine S0 space-stored seeds in a single exposure experiment, the results demonstrate the preservation of barley seeds in outer space for 13 months without phenotypic or genotypic changes and with healthy and vigorous growth in space.     

Some technical aspects of gaseous detonation

This paper briefly describes two attempts to utilize detonative combustion processes to MHD conversion of thermal energy of fuel to electrical energy and bonding of atmospheric nitrogen. For this purpose a continuous impulse detonation chamber with a frequency up to 200 cps was constructed. Using methane-oxygen-nitrogen mixtures the chamber was maintained in stable operation for several hundred hours. Oil was also employed as fuel.Estimates based on experimental data showed that up to 2% of chemical energy of the fuel may be converted into electrical energy. The use of an accelerating nozzle may improve this result.The concentration of nitrogen oxide in combustion products of the detonation wave was higher by 14% than that expected under usual combustion conditions.The advantages of this type of apparatus are: absence of compressors for fuel and oxidant, impulse current generation, low temperatures of chamber walls, and operation over a large range of operating conditions.Problems associated with the effect of the magnetic field on the propagation of the detonation wave are discussed and the possibility of applying the Zeldovich theory to the case of MHD interaction is described. It is shown that the detonation velocity may either increase or decrease depending on the relative orientation of the direction of magnetic field with respect to the detonation wave.     

Unsteady laminar separation over impulsively moved cylinders

A numerical method is employed to integrate the unsteady laminar boundary layers about circular and elliptic cylinders started impulsively from rest. An upwind differencing scheme permits the integration through thin layers of reversed flow that are embedded in the boundary layer. The results are in agreement with numerical solutions of the full Navier-Stokes equations and with small time inner-outer expansion solutions. At later times, a singularity of the Goldstein type appears; Sears and Telionis defined this singularity as unsteady boundary-layer separation. For the circular cylinder, this singularity travels upstream and for large times, arrives asymptotically at the point of steady-state separation.     

IMF Direction Derived from Cycloid-Like Ion Distributions Observed by Mars Express

Although the Mars Express (MEX) does not carry a magnetometer, it is in principle possible to derive the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation from the three dimensional velocity distribution of pick-up ions measured by the Ion Mass Analyser (IMA) on board MEX because pick-up ions' orbits, in velocity phase space, are expected to gyrate around the IMF when the IMF is relatively uniform on a scale larger than the proton gyroradius. During bow shock outbound crossings, MEX often observed cycloid distributions (two dimensional partial ring distributions in velocity phase space) of protons in a narrow channel of the IMA detector (only one azimuth for many polar angles). We show two such examples. Three different methods are used to derive the IMF orientation from the observed cycloid distributions. One method is intuitive (intuitive method), while the others derive the minimum variance direction of the velocity vectors for the observed ring ions. These velocity vectors are selected either manually (manual method) or automatically using simple filters (automatic method). While the intuitive method and the manual method provide similar IMF orientations by which the observed cycloid distribution is well arranged into a partial circle (representing gyration) and constant parallel velocity, the automatic method failed to arrange the data to the degree of the manual method, yielding about a 30° offset in the estimated IMF direction. The uncertainty of the derived IMF orientation is strongly affected by the instrument resolution. The source population for these ring distributions is most likely newly ionized hydrogen atoms, which are picked up by the solar wind.     

The Magnetospheric Multiscale Magnetometers

The success of the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission depends on the accurate measurement of the magnetic field on all four spacecraft. To ensure this success, two independently designed and built fluxgate magnetometers were developed, avoiding single-point failures. The magnetometers were dubbed the digital fluxgate (DFG), which uses an ASIC implementation and was supplied by the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the analogue magnetometer (AFG) with a more traditional circuit board design supplied by the University of California, Los Angeles. A stringent magnetic cleanliness program was executed under the supervision of the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. To achieve mission objectives, the calibration determined on the ground will be refined in space to ensure all eight magnetometers are precisely inter-calibrated. Near real-time data plays a key role in the transmission of high-resolution observations stored on board so rapid processing of the low-resolution data is required. This article describes these instruments, the magnetic cleanliness program, and the instrument pre-launch calibrations, the planned in-flight calibration program, and the information flow that provides the data on the rapid time scale needed for mission success.     

Voyager 2 plasma wave observations at Uranus

At Uranus, the Voyager 2 plasma wave investigation observed very significant phenomena related to radio emissions, dust impacts and magnetospheric wave-particle interactions. On January 19, 1986 (R= 270R_U) the plasma wave investigation detected an intense radio burst at 31 and 56 kHz, and this provided the first indication that Uranus had a magnetosphere. During the encounter we observed more of these sporadic bursts, along with relatively continuous radio emissions extending down to 10 kHz, and a sporadic narrowband radio signal with f near 5 kHz. As Voyager passed through the ring plane, the plasma wave investigation recorded a large number of dust impacts. The dust ring was relatively diffuse (thickness of several thousand kilometers) and the peak impact rate was near 50 hits/second. The Voyager 2 plasma wave instrument also detected many strong electromagnetic and electrostatic plasma waves, with intensity peaks in the region within 12 Uranus adii. These waves have characteristics that can interact strongly with the local plasma and with the trapped energetic particles, leading to precipitation into the atmosphere, charged particle acceleration, and charged particle diffusion. In addition we detected strong wave activity in the region of the bow shock and moderate levels in the magnetic tail.