New asymmetry monitoring techniques: Effects on attitude control

The asymmetry limitation between left and right wing flap surfaces is one of the most severe requirements for the design of the actuation and control system. Each asymmetry exceeding a defined value must be detected and limited by appropriate monitoring devices equipped with a suitable software.In the design of a new flap control system the development of the asymmetry monitoring system plays a very important role and it is a very debated matter in industrial field. Nevertheless in scientific literature this topic is so neglected that, at the best of our knowledge, no paper dealing with the specific argument exists, except for the authors' works listed in the references.The currently used monitoring technique is based on the differential position control between left and right surfaces. Nevertheless in particularly severe conditions the above mentioned technique may be unable to prevent potentially critical asymmetries; in order to limit the above mentioned shortcomings, the authors proposed and developed some innovative monitoring techniques in previous papers. Their use generally reduces the asymmetry slightly, but in some cases it may have an unreliable behavior. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the previous models, in this work the authors develop and propose new different monitoring strategies and assess their positive effects on the maximum asymmetry following a torque tube failure.     

Solar sail optimal control with solar irradiance fluctuations

The optimization of a solar sail-based orbital transfer amounts to searching for the control law that minimizes the flight time. In this context, the optimal trajectory is usually determined assuming constant solar properties. However, the total solar irradiance undergoes both long-term (solar cycles) and short-term variations, and recent analyses have shown that this may have an impact on solar sailing for missions requiring an accurate thrust modulation. In this regard, the paper discusses a strategy to overcome such an issue by suitably adjusting the thrust vector in order to track a reference, optimal, transfer trajectory. In particular, the sail propulsive acceleration magnitude is modified by means of a set of electrochromic material panels, which change their optical properties on application of a suitable electric voltage. The proposed control law is validated with a set of numerical simulations that involve a classical Earth-Mars, orbit-to-orbit, heliocentric transfer.     

Effects of optical parameter measurement uncertainties and solar irradiance fluctuations on solar sailing

The heliocentric orbital dynamics of a spacecraft propelled by a solar sail is affected by some uncertainty sources, including possible inaccuracies in the measurement of the sail film optical properties. Moreover, the solar radiation pressure, which is responsible for the solar sail propulsive acceleration generation, is not time-constant and is subject to fluctuations that are basically unpredictable and superimposed to the well-known 11-year solar activity cycle. In this context, this work aims at investigating the effects of such uncertainties on the actual heliocentric trajectory of a solar sail by means of stochastic simulations performed with a generalized polynomial chaos procedure. The numerical results give an estimation of their impact on the actual heliocentric trajectory and identify whether some of the uncertainty sources are more relevant than others. This is a fundamental information for directing more accurate theoretical and experimental efforts toward the most important parameters, in order to obtain an accurate knowledge of the solar sail thrust vector characteristics and, eventually, of the spacecraft heliocentric position.     

Inter-satellite links for satellite autonomous integrity monitoring

A new integrity monitoring mechanisms to be implemented on-board on a GNSS taking advantage of inter-satellite links has been introduced. This is based on accurate range and Doppler measurements not affected neither by atmospheric delays nor ground local degradation (multipath and interference). By a linear combination of the Inter-Satellite Links Observables, appropriate observables for both satellite orbits and clock monitoring are obtained and by the proposed algorithms it is possible to reduce the time-to-alarm and the probability of undetected satellite anomalies.     

U. S. Navy in Space: Past, Present, and Future

The announcement last summer of the establishment of the U. S. Navy Space Command, and its subsequent activation at Dahlgren, Va., in October 1983, may have come as a surprise to some. This, however, was the latest of a series of actions taken by the Department of the Navy over the last several years to consolidate the Navy's space efforts. In fact, since the beginning of the Space Age, the Navy has been interested in space and involved in space-related activities. Its contributions in space science and technology have been significant. Driven by a realization that space assets are exceptionally well matched to its global mission, the Navy has become a major user of space. Primary areas of current activity include command, control, and communication and navigation and collection of environmental information. The Navy's operational use of space systems, the nature of the evolving Soviet threat (both air and space) directed in a large measure at U. S. naval targets, and the recent advances made in space technology, all argue for an increased level of Navy involvement in future Department of Defense space activities to secure Navy interests. As viewed by Navy decision-makers, this increased level of involvement will be selective in nature, emphasizing space research and development and operations that are considered vital to Navy interests.     

Classification of hyperspectral remote-sensing data with primal SVM for small-sized training dataset problem

With recent technological advances in remote sensing, very high-dimensional (hyperspectral) data are available for a better discrimination among different complex land-cover classes having similar spectral signatures. However, this large number of bands makes very complex the task of automatic data analysis. In the real application, it is difficult and expensive for the expert to acquire enough training samples to learn a classifier. This results in a classification problem with small-size training sample set. Recently, a regularization-based algorithm is usually proposed to handle such problem, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), which usually are implemented in the dual form with Lagrange theory. However, it can be solved directly in primal formulation. In this paper, we introduces an alternative implementation technique for SVM to address the classification problem with small-size training sample set. It has been empirically proven that the effectiveness of the introduced implementation technique which has been evaluated by benchmark datasets.