How the astronomical aspects of climate science were settled? On the Milankovitch and Bacsák anniversaries,with lessons for today

It was 100 years ago (on August 7, 1920), that the comprehensive mathematical foundations of climate change research, written by a Serbian researcher, Milutin Milankovitch, were published. A later interpreter and developer of his results, Georg (in Hungarian: György) Bacsák (Pozsony/Pressburg/Bratislava, June 5, 1870 - Fonyód, March 4, 1970) was born 150 years ago and died at the age of one hundred, half a century ago. In this commemorative paper we look back to special circumstances in revealing the secrets of ice ages that had puzzled scientists for at least several centuries. Recently, after 100 years, the Milankovitch theory, including related short-term forcings (ranging from interannual, multidecadal to millennial timescales) has not only been confirmed, but its climate forcing mechanism has also been identified and proposed. Owing to the uniqueness of the problem, the science of the orbital forcing of climate change can be proclaimed to be essentially settled.     

Ariane 5 GTO debris mitigation using natural perturbations

GTO objects can potentially collide with operative satellites in LEO and GEO protected regions. Internationally accepted debris mitigation guidelines require that these objects exit these protected regions within 25?years, e.g. by re-entering and burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. In this paper, an inventory of the GTO debris generated from Ariane 5 launches in the period 2012–2017 is provided, and it is expected that none of these objects will re-enter within 25?years. For future launches, natural perturbations can be exploited to increase compliance with mitigation guidelines without the use of extra propellant or complex de-orbiting systems, which is attractive from an economic point of view. The lifetime of GTO objects is very sensitive to initial conditions and some environmental and body-related parameters, mainly due to the effect of solar gravity on the perigee altitude. As a consequence, the lifetime of a specific GTO object cannot be predicted accurately, but its probability of re-entering in less than 25?years can be estimated with proper accuracy by following a statistical approach. By propagating the orbits of over 800,000 simulated Ariane 5 GTO objects, it was found that the launch time leading to the highest probability of compliance with debris mitigation guidelines for GEO launches from Kourou corresponds to about 2 PM local time, regardless of the date of launch, which leads to compliance rates ranging from 60 to 100%. Current practice is to launch at around 5–9?PM, so a change in procedures would be required in order to reach a higher degree of compliance with debris mitigation guidelines, which was predicted to be on average below 20% for the objects generated in the period 2012–2017.     

DebrisWatch I: A survey of faint geosynchronous debris

Recent anomalies exhibited by satellites and rocket bodies have highlighted that a population of faint debris exists at geosynchronous (GEO) altitudes, where there are no natural removal mechanisms. Despite previous optical surveys probing to around 10–20 cm in size, regular monitoring of faint sources at GEO is challenging, thus our knowledge remains sparse. It is essential that we continue to explore the faint debris population using large telescopes to better understand the risk posed to active GEO satellites. To this end, we present photometric results from a survey of the GEO region carried out with the 2.54 m Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, Canary Islands. We probe to 21st visual magnitude (around 10 cm, assuming Lambertian spheres with an albedo of 0.1), uncovering 129 orbital tracks with GEO-like motion across the eight nights of dark-grey time comprising the survey. The faint end of our brightness distribution continues to rise until the sensitivity limit of the sensor is reached, suggesting that the modal brightness could be even fainter. We uncover a number of faint, uncatalogued objects that show photometric signatures of rapid tumbling, many of which straddle the limiting magnitude of our survey over the course of a single exposure, posing a complex issue when estimating object size. This work presents the first instalment of DebrisWatch, an ongoing collaboration between the University of Warwick and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (UK) investigating the faint population of GEO debris.     

A Partially Orthogonal EnKF approach to atmospheric density estimation using orbital debris

A key requirement for accurate trajectory prediction and space situational awareness is knowledge of how non-conservative forces affect space object motion. These forces vary temporally and spatially, and are driven by the underlying behavior of space weather particularly in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Existing trajectory prediction algorithms adjust space weather models based on calibration satellite observations. However, lack of sufficient data and mismodeling of non-conservative forces cause inaccuracies in space object motion prediction, especially for uncontrolled debris objects. The uncontrolled nature of debris objects makes them particularly sensitive to the variations in space weather. Our research takes advantage of this behavior by utilizing observations of debris objects to infer the space environment parameters influencing their motion.The hypothesis of this research is that it is possible to utilize debris objects as passive, indirect sensors of the space environment. We focus on estimating atmospheric density and its spatial variability to allow for more precise prediction of LEO object motion. The estimated density is parameterized as a grid of values, distributed by latitude and local sidereal time over a spherical shell encompassing Earth at a fixed altitude of 400 km. The position and velocity of each debris object are also estimated. A Partially Orthogonal Ensemble Kalman Filter (POEnKF) is used for assimilation of space object measurements to estimate density.For performance comparison, the scenario characteristics (number of objects, measurement cadence, etc.) are based on a sensor tasking campaign executed for the High Accuracy Satellite Drag Model project. The POEnKF analysis details spatial comparisons between the true and estimated density fields, and quantifies the improved accuracy in debris object motion predictions due to more accurate drag force models from density estimates. It is shown that there is an advantage to utilizing multiple debris objects instead of just one object. Although the work presented here explores the POEnKF performance when using information from only 16 debris objects, the research vision is to utilize information from all routinely observed debris objects. Overall, the filter demonstrates the ability to estimate density to within a threshold of accuracy dependent on measurement/sensor error. In the case of a geomagnetic storm, the filter is able to track the storm and provide more accurate density estimates than would be achieved using a simple exponential atmospheric density model or MSIS Atmospheric Model (when calm conditions are assumed).     

天问一号环绕器中继轨道受摄共振特性分析

“天问一号”环绕器在环火中继轨道为“祝融”火星车提供中继服务时,星下点出现了过着陆点纬度时的经度先增大再减小的特殊漂移现象,需要对该现象产生的原因进行深入分析。基于摄动理论设计了一系列数值实验,提出了一种星下点过指定纬度时经度的简化计算方法;并结合对田谐项引力场位函数的解析推导发现,由于中继轨道周期与火星自转周期比接近1:3,导致3阶3次田谐项产生了轨道共振,从而使得半长轴长周期运动有着较为显著的振荡,进而与带谐项摄动联合导致了该特殊现象。研究揭示了“天问一号”环绕器的轨道共振现象,发现了高阶田谐项对非同步轨道上的环火卫星仍能产生较为明显的轨道共振现象。研究结果可为后续火星环绕探测任务轨道设计提供重要参考。     

基于谐波小波变换的雷达辐射源识别

雷达辐射源识别是电子战系统的关键技术之一。分析了放大器的非线性效应,提出用谐波信号幅度之间的约束关系特征进行雷达辐射源识别的方法,针对谐波信号十分微弱的问题,提出采用谐波小波变换对信号进行重构、然后对重构的信号用最小二乘拟合进行幅度估计的方法,提高了幅度估计的精度。最后通过仿真验证了方法的准确性和有效性。     

地面目标识别特征影响因素分析

地面目标可见光识别特征主要包括形状、颜色、亮度等。研究表明地面目标的可见光辐射主要是反射太阳辐射,目标与背景在可见光波段的亮度对比取决于目标与背景的反射率。大气气象条件是影响目标识别特征的主要因素。     

一种圆极化天线极化特性的幅度精测方法

文章介绍了一种圆极化天线极化特性的测试方法。该方法仅利用幅度测量得到圆极化天线极化椭圆相关数据,就可获得圆极化天线主极化、交叉极化、圆极化轴比等全部信息。该方法简单可行且可获得精确的极化特性测试结果。应用该测试方法,结合使用时域硬件门测试技术,在紧缩场成功实现了星载大型UHF螺旋天线的测试,获得了理想的测试结果,使得大型紧缩场双反射面系统在UHF频段的应用成为可能。     

长期在轨运行卫星的轨道维持技术

本文研究近地轨道卫星长期在轨运行的轨道维持问题。轨道维持的任务是将卫星的星下点轨迹保持在设计的参考轨迹附近。近地轨道卫星所受的摄动力包括地球引力摄动、日月摄动、大气阻力摄动和光压摄动等,而影响卫星轨道星下点漂移的主要因素是大气阻力摄动。本文给出了一种新的卫星轨道维持策略,数学仿真表明了其有效性。     

空间拦截攻击区和威胁区仿真研究

基于冲量变轨理论,建立了天基动能拦截器通过一次变轨机动拦截目标的轨道机动模型,提出了攻击区和威胁区的概念,并给出了确定攻击区和威胁区的数值搜索算法.通过仿真计算,分别对不同的拦截时间和机动能力约束条件下攻击区和威胁区进行了仿真分析,结果表明,利用本算法能够方便地得到动能拦截器的攻击区和目标的威胁区,为拦截的实现提供必要的决策条件.