Measuring the economic benefits of a national planetary protection policy to regulate future private space activities between Earth and Mars: Results of a contingent valuation survey in Greece

The emergence of private space actors may soon enable the growth of the novel market segments of space research and exploration, space resources utilization, and human access to space. The interdisciplinary field of Planetary Protection has to keep up with these advances. Planetary Protection is defined as a set of guidelines that aim to prevent the forward contamination of celestial bodies with biological material from Earth and the backward contamination of the terrestrial biosphere with extraterrestrial biological material. As space entrepreneurs acquire and develop the resources and competencies for commercial access to space, significant questions are expected to be raised in the future with respect to potential forward and backward contamination issues, particularly with respect to activities between Earth and Mars. Although such private activities do not seem to pose a serious Planetary Protection threat at the moment, certain preparatory steps need to be taken in order to prudently inform the relevant policy-making procedures. This work describes the application of the Contingent Valuation Method, a useful tool of the environmental economics discipline, with the aim of demonstrating a novel approach to estimate the economic valuation of the external benefits of preventing forward and backward contamination between Earth and Mars. Particularly, via a survey specifically developed for this purpose, a set of questions are used to elicit the perceived economic value that respondents place on the prevention of forward and backward contamination; the survey is administered to a national probability sample in Greece, and the generated data is processed through statistical analysis. The Contingent Valuation Method is a popular and well-established stated preference valuation technique; these techniques are often the more suitable choice for ex-ante valuations of future changes, and are currently the only known approach to capture all the aspects of the economic value of non-market goods. Through an initial proof-of-concept in Greece, the goal of this work is to provide useful insights on the expected external benefits of a national Planetary Protection policy to regulate future private space activities between Earth and Mars, and to encourage a larger-scale application of this tool in other countries around the world.     

Event-triggered adaptive fuzzy attitude takeover control of spacecraft

The problem of attitude takeover control of spacecraft by using cellular satellites with limited communication, actuator faults and input saturation is investigated. In order to lighten the communication burden of cellular satellites, an event-triggered control strategy is adopted. The filtered attitude information needs to be transmitted only when the defined measurement error reaches the event-triggered threshold in this strategy. Then, to deal with the unknown inertia matrix, actuator faults, external disturbances and the errors caused by event-triggered scheme, fuzzy logic systems is introduced to estimate the uncertainties directly. Combining fuzzy logic control strategy and the event-triggered method, the first event-triggered adaptive fuzzy control law is developed. Then, torque saturation of cellular satellites is further considered in the second control law, where the upper bound of the uncertainties is estimated by fuzzy logic systems. The resulting closed-loop systems under the two control laws are guaranteed to be bounded. Finally, the effectiveness of two proposed control laws is verified by the numerical simulations.     

An engineering model of Titan surface winds for Dragonfly landed operations

Winds near the ground on Titan for the Dragonfly landing site (near Selk crater, 10°N) for the mid-2030s (Titan late southern summer, L_s ~ 310°) are estimated for mission design purposes. Prevailing winds due to the global circulation are typically 0.5 m/s, and do not exceed 1 m/s. Local terrain-induced flows such as slope winds appear to be similarly capped at 1 m/s. At various landing sites and times, these two contributions will vectorially combine to yield steady winds (for part of a Titan day, Tsol) of up to 2.0 m/s, but typically less – the slope wind component will be small in the mid-morning. In early afternoon, as on Earth and Mars, solar-driven convection in the planetary boundary layer will cause wind fluctuations of the order of 0.1 m/s, varying with a typical timescale of ~1000 s. Occasionally this convection organizes into coherent ‘dust devil’ vortices: detectable vortices with speeds of 1 m/s are predicted about once per Titan day. We have introduced the convective velocity scale combined with the advection time of PBL cells as a metric to derive the frequency of occurrence of gusts associated with convective vortices (‘dust devils’). Maximum possible vortex winds on Titan of 2.8 m/s may be expected only once per 40 Tsols, and define the maximum wind (4.8 m/s at 10 m height) that Dragonfly must tolerate without damage. The applicability of different wind combinations, scaled to the height of relevant Dragonfly components above the ground (e.g. the maximum corresponds to 3.9 m/s at 1.3 m height) by a logarithmic wind profile, to Dragonfly design and operations are discussed.     

太空中的PM2.5——太阳系尘埃动力学研究进展

对太阳系尘埃动力学所涉及到的基本内容进行概述，包括尘埃的种类、成分、尺寸、密度、形状和生命周期。介绍了近年来在尘埃的来源与生成机制方面的力学过程、主要理论、模型与方法，包括冲击溅射、表面喷射、风化、滑坡、质量脱落、旋转断裂等，阐述了尘埃的充电过程与磁场环境，简要概述了航天任务的尘埃探测结果，介绍了尘埃受力模型、单个尘埃颗粒的运动以及大量尘埃的分布特征、动力学现象及内在规律方面的最新研究结论。最后对太阳系尘埃动力学领域的未来发展趋势进行了展望。     

一种姿控动力装置热防护研究

酚醛树脂作为一种烧蚀材料,凭借其耐高温的特性应用于航天器防热系统,其防热性能在工程实际中需进行考核。以某航天器一段包覆80纤维布/酚醛树脂的液路管路作为研究对象,以定热流为边界条件,采用仿真计算和热流试验的研究方法对空导管以及注水导管的温度场进行研究:仿真计算得出导管表面平衡温度分布以及导管表面具有代表性某点瞬态温度变化;为验证仿真计算的准确性,进行了热流试验,得出了导管表面以及水中温度测点的瞬态温度变化;根据热流试验的温度结果,分析比对了热流试验对仿真计算的验证情况。研究结果表明:80纤维布/酚醛树脂的防热性能符合温度指标要求;仿真结果和热流试验结果一致度良好,证明了仿真计算的合理性和准确性。     

航班延误赔偿现状及乘客过激行为的分析与预防

航班延误产生的矛盾会导致乘客采取过激的方式维权,这对民航运输安全造成了很大的影响。本文分析了航班延误后旅客采取的过激维权行为的原因,并从不同角度提出了预防措施,希望能对避免航班延误后乘客和航空公司发生矛盾以及采取过激维权行为有所裨益。     

Viability of bacterial spores exposed to hydrazine

For the purposes of planetary protection, a series of experiments were performed to answer a long-standing question about the potential of bacterial contamination of interplanetary spacecraft from liquid hydrazine. Spores of Bacillus atrophaeus (ATCC No. 9372, also known as Bacillus subtilis var. niger, and BSN) were exposed to hydrazine and survivors were enumerated using the NASA standard planetary protection pour plate assay. Results indicate that bulk hydrazine rocket propellant may be considered free of living bacterial cells for planetary protection compliance.     

Might astronauts one day be treated like return samples?

The next time humans set foot on the Moon or another planet, will we treat the crew like we would a sample return mission when they come back to Earth? This may seem a surprising or even provocative question, but it is one we need to address. The hurdles and hazards of sending humans to Mars – for example, the technology constraints and physiological and psychological challenges – are many; but let us not forget the need to protect populations and environments from the risk of contamination [United Nations, treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies (the “Outer Space Treaty”) referenced 610 UNTS 205 - resolution 2222(XXI) of December 1966].     

多辐射器航天器热控流体回路布局的(火积)耗散分析

为了优化多辐射器航天器热控流体回路布局，提高流体回路的散热效率，降低流体回路温度，本文基于(火积)理论，分别对多个辐射器串联和并联的流体回路布局的散热进行了分析。结果表明，排散相同热量时，流体回路的流体与管路壁面之间的温差均匀性越好，流体回路散热过程(火积)耗散越小，系统散热过程越优。进一步，对于2个辐射器的情况，分别对辐射器设置了不同的空间辐射加热热流，对辐射器的流体回路布局方式进行了比较。结果表明，辐射器与流体回路串联时，系统散热性能要优于两者并联，系统的流体温度水平最低，结果与(火积)理论分析的预测完全一致。研究结论对多辐射器的航天器热控流体回路设计具有指导意义。     

A new modeling method of solar energetic proton events for ISO specification

Solar energetic protons degrade performance and reliability of spacecraft systems due to single-event effects, total dose effects and displacement damage in electronics components including solar cells. On designing a solar cell panel, a total fluence of solar energetic protons (SEPs) which cause solar cell damage is needed to estimate power loss of the solar cells over mission life. Nowadays a solar panel area of spacecraft is increasing as spacecraft mission life becomes longer (15–18 years). Thus an accurate SEP model is strongly required for the cost-minimum design from the aerospace industry. The SEP model, JPL-91 proposed by Feynman et al., is currently used widely for solar cell designing. However, it is known that the JPL-91 model predicts higher fluences of protons than values actually experienced in space, especially after 7 years on orbit. In addition, the model is based on several assumptions, and also needs Monte-Carlo simulations for calculating fluences. In this study, we propose a new method for modeling SEPs especially focused on solar cell degradation. The newly-proposed method is empirical, which constructs a model based directly upon proton flux measurement data taken by instruments onboard spacecraft. This method has neither assumptions nor dependence on SEP event selection, both of which are needed in JPL-91. The model fluences derived from this method show lower fluences in longer missions compared to JPL-91. This method has been proposed to ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and has been discussed for a new standard SEP model.