Coronal mass ejection detection using wavelets,curvelets and ridgelets: Applications for space weather monitoring

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large-scale eruptions of plasma and magnetic field that can produce adverse space weather at Earth and other locations in the Heliosphere. Due to the intrinsic multiscale nature of features in coronagraph images, wavelet and multiscale image processing techniques are well suited to enhancing the visibility of CMEs and suppressing noise. However, wavelets are better suited to identifying point-like features, such as noise or background stars, than to enhancing the visibility of the curved form of a typical CME front. Higher order multiscale techniques, such as ridgelets and curvelets, were therefore explored to characterise the morphology (width, curvature) and kinematics (position, velocity, acceleration) of CMEs. Curvelets in particular were found to be well suited to characterising CME properties in a self-consistent manner. Curvelets are thus likely to be of benefit to autonomous monitoring of CME properties for space weather applications.     

首颗自主地月转移微卫星“龙江二号”

本文对世界首颗独立完成地月转移、近月制动、环月飞行的微卫星“龙江二号”进行了介绍。首先阐述了龙江二号的任务目标和总体方案；然后重点分析了轨道设计与控制、复杂电磁干扰的标定与抑制、宽视场三维基线干涉测量等关键技术难点；接着回顾了任务的实施过程；最后详细介绍了低频射电探测仪、沙特光学相机和VHF/UHF通信模块与学生微型CMOS相机等有效载荷，并展示了上述载荷获取的初步成果。     

空间激光通信系统中的信道纠错编码技术

由于空间激光通信系统的信道状态和链路捕获跟踪的不确定性,多种形式的信道纠错编码技术正被广泛发展研究。结合空间激光通信链路中误码性能的主要影响因素,分别选择合适的编码方案进行分析。通过仿真实验可知,对于在大气结构参数为1.5×10~(-14) m~(-2/3)、风速为20 m/s的空地激光链路的环境下,在系统数据速率为2 Gbit/s、要求误码率为10~(-6)时,LDPC码结合交织码相对未编码系统有3 dB的等效编码增益,LT码相对未编码系统有3.8 dB的等效编码增益。提供了一种能快速生成、扩展和校验的编码和交织实现方法,以抵抗大气湍流的快速变化对系统性能产生的影响。     

A compliant polymorphing wing for small UAVs

This paper presents the development of a novel compliant polymorphing wing capable of chord and camber morphing for small UAVs. The morphing wing can achieve up to 10% chord extension and ±20° camber changes. The design, modeling, sizing, manufacturing and mechanical testing of the wing are detailed. The polymorphing wing consists of one continuous front spar fixed to the fuselage and a rear spar on each side of the wing. Each rear spar can translate in the chordwise direction (chord morphing) and rotate around itself (camber morphing). A flexible elastomeric latex sheet is used as the skin to cover the wing and maintain its aerodynamic shape whilst allowing morphing. The loads from the skin are transferred to the spars using the compliant cellular ribs that support the flexible skin and facilitate morphing. Pre-tensioning is applied to the skin to minimize wrinkling when subject to aerodynamic and actuation loads. A rack and pinion actuation system, powered by stepper motors, is used for morphing. Aero-structural design, analysis and sizing are conducted. Performance comparison between the polymorphing wing and the baseline wing (non-morphing) shows that chord morphing improves aerodynamic efficiency at low angles of attack while camber morphing improves efficiency at high angles of attack.     

Electric potential structures of auroral acceleration region border from multi-spacecraft Cluster data

This paper studies an auroral event using data from three spacecraft of the Cluster mission, one inside and two at the poleward edge of the bottom of the Auroral Acceleration Region (AAR). The study reveals the three-dimensional profile of the region’s poleward boundary, showing spatial segmentation of the electric potential structures and their decay in time. It also depicts localized magnetic field variations and field-aligned currents that appear to have remained stable for at least 80?s. Such observations became possible due to the fortuitous motion of the three spacecraft nearly parallel to each other and tangential to the AAR edge, so that the differences and variations can be seen when the spacecraft enter and exit the segmentations, hence revealing their position with respect to the AAR.     

WSO-UV project

During last three decades, astronomers have enjoyed continuous access to the 100–300 nm ultraviolet (UV) spectral range where the resonance transitions of the most abundant atoms and ions (at temperatures between 3000 and 300 000 K) reside. This UV range is not accessible from ground-based facilities. The successful International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) observatory, the Russian ASTRON mission and successor instruments such as the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission or the COS and STIS spectrographs on-board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) prove the major impact of observations in the UV wavelength range in modern astronomy. Future access to space-based observatories is expected to be very limited. For the next decade, the post-HST era, the World Space Observatory – Ultraviolet (WSO–UV) will be the only 2-m class UV telescope with capabilities similar to the HST. WSO–UV will be equipped with instruments for imaging and spectroscopy and it will be a facility dedicated, full-time, to UV astronomy. In this article, we briefly outline the current status of the WSO–UV mission and the science management plan.     

Do RadioAstron detections correlate with flaring states? An initial study of seven southern AGN

We examine the state of seven southern radio sources at the time of their RadioAstron AGN Survey observations. Both ATCA flux density monitoring data and Fermi light-curves are considered in determining the relative activity of the source. A simple hypothesis, that sufficiently compact source structure exists for detections on RadioAstron baselines when the source is in a flaring state, is qualitatively tested. We find four instances of RadioAstron detections during flaring radio states and four instances of RadioAstron non-detections during fading or quiescent radio states, in support of the hypothesis. However, we also find three instances of RadioAstron detections during quiescent or fading radio states, and two non-detections during a flaring state, indicating that the situation is (not unexpectedly) more complex. Radio and gamma-ray monitoring such as that described here, together with the full RadioAstron AGN Survey results, will allow a more thorough investigation of the dependencies of detections on baselines of >10 Earth diameters.     

A shortcut to marking 3D target curves on curved surface via a galvanometric laser scanner

Marking arbitrary three-dimensional(3D) target curves on given objects with curved surface is required in many industrial fields, such as fabric prepreg placement in composite material part fabrication, product assembly, surface painting for decoration, etc. A shortcut to the solution of this intractable problem is proposed by utilizing a galvanometric laser scanner(GLS) with the aid of a camera. Without using the existing tedious GLS calibration procedures,the proposed method directly establishes a mapping between the 3D coordinates of the laser spots on the object surface and the control voltages of the scanner. A single-hidden layer feedforward neural network(SLFN) is employed to model the mapping. By projecting a dense grid of laser spots on the object to be marked and simultaneously taking only one image, the SLFN model is trained in minutes via a linear solving mechanism. Experiments demonstrate that the trained SLFN model has a good generalization performance for marking 3D target curves. The 3D laser marking errors on experimental objects are less than 0.5 mm. The proposed method is especially suitable for on-site use and can be conveniently extended to multiple GLSs for marking large complex objects.