Astrophysics in 2006

The fastest pulsar and the slowest nova; the oldest galaxies and the youngest stars; the weirdest life forms and the commonest dwarfs; the highest energy particles and the lowest energy photons. These were some of the extremes of Astrophysics 2006. We attempt also to bring you updates on things of which there is currently only one (habitable planets, the Sun, and the Universe) and others of which there are always many, like meteors and molecules, black holes and binaries.     

Emergence of a Habitable Planet

We address the first several hundred million years of Earth’s history. The Moon-forming impact left Earth enveloped in a hot silicate atmosphere that cooled and condensed over ∼1,000 yrs. As it cooled the Earth degassed its volatiles into the atmosphere. It took another ∼2 Myrs for the magma ocean to freeze at the surface. The cooling rate was determined by atmospheric thermal blanketing. Tidal heating by the new Moon was a major energy source to the magma ocean. After the mantle solidified geothermal heat became climatologically insignificant, which allowed the steam atmosphere to condense, and left behind a ∼100 bar, ∼500 K CO₂ atmosphere. Thereafter cooling was governed by how quickly CO₂ was removed from the atmosphere. If subduction were efficient this could have taken as little as 10 million years. In this case the faint young Sun suggests that a lifeless Earth should have been cold and its oceans white with ice. But if carbonate subduction were inefficient the CO₂ would have mostly stayed in the atmosphere, which would have kept the surface near ∼500 K for many tens of millions of years. Hydrous minerals are harder to subduct than carbonates and there is a good chance that the Hadean mantle was dry. Hadean heat flow was locally high enough to ensure that any ice cover would have been thin (<5 m) in places. Moreover hundreds or thousands of asteroid impacts would have been big enough to melt the ice triggering brief impact summers. We suggest that plate tectonics as it works now was inadequate to handle typical Hadean heat flows of 0.2–0.5 W/m². In its place we hypothesize a convecting mantle capped by a ∼100 km deep basaltic mush that was relatively permeable to heat flow. Recycling and distillation of hydrous basalts produced granitic rocks very early, which is consistent with preserved >4 Ga detrital zircons. If carbonates in oceanic crust subducted as quickly as they formed, Earth could have been habitable as early as 10–20 Myrs after the Moon-forming impact.     

摆动扫描地球敏感器数学模型及飞行试验结果

描述了东方红三号卫星(DFH-3)控制系统设计和数学仿真中采用的摆动扫描地球敏感器IRES-01的数学模型，东方红三号卫星近三年飞行试验结果与数学仿真结果基本一致，证明数学模型是正确的。     

国外航天侦察相机和测绘相机发展概况

航天侦察和测绘是战略武装必不可少的组成部分,航天侦察和测绘相机是对地观测卫星的有效载荷。 该文将简要介绍国外航天侦察和测绘相机发展概况、水平和发展趋势。     

FY-2气象卫星在轨管理工程测控关键技术(上)

介绍了风云二号(FY—2)地球静止轨道自旋气象卫星工程测控的关键技术。分析了位置保持、姿态确定、星蚀和日凌的原理，给出了位置保持、姿态控制策略和地影、月影、日凌预报算法。并提出了一种检验定姿结果正确性的方法，提供了相应的工程计算参数。这些策略都已成功地用于FY—2卫星的在轨管理工程测控。     

CBERS-1卫星CCD相机图像预处理

文章简要阐述了资源卫星的发展与现状 ,概括了资源卫星的主要应用领域和将会带来的巨大经济、社会效益。介绍了CBERS_1卫星CCD相机辐射定标技术 ,分析了CBERS_1卫星CCD相机辐射定标和图像预处理过程 ,展示了经过处理的多光谱图像     

中巴地球资源卫星与应用

中巴地球资源卫星是以中国为主研制的第一代传输型地球资源卫星。文章简要介绍了它的发展历程 ,全面介绍了星上的有效载荷、采用的先进技术和应用成果     

Online scheduling of distributed Earth observation satellite system under rigid communication constraints

This paper focused on online scheduling of distributed Earth observation satellite system in a dynamic environment. The objective was to maximize the total profit of the overall system by efficiently coordinating the different satellites with stochastic arrival of urgent tasks, subject to rigid communication and observation time window constraints. We formulated this problem as a single-task, single-robot, time-extended assignment problem with intra-schedule dependency using the multi-robot task assignment taxonomy and formulated the sub-problem after releasing urgent tasks in a mixed-integer linear programming model. We first described the online scheduling algorithm for a single satellite, then we proposed the modified consensus-based bundle algorithm (m-CBBA) and modified asynchronous consensus-based bundle algorithm (m-ACBBA) with synchronous and asynchronous communication, respectively. Compared with initial versions of CBBA and ACBBA, the modified versions added the communication loop prediction phases to efficiently utilize scarce communication opportunities and reduce the communication requirements. Additionally, we introduce two contract net protocol (CNP)-based algorithms for comparison, respectively SingleItem-CNP-based (SI-CNP) algorithm and Batch-CNP-based (BA-CNP) algorithm. Computational experiments indicated that both the total profit and percentage of scheduled urgent tasks achieved by the m-ACBBA and m-CBBA algorithms were much higher than those achieved by both SI-CNP and BA-CNP. Additionally, the number of communications needed by either m-ACBBA or m-CBBA algorithm was lower than that by SI-CNP. When the communication cost in the system is high, the m-CBBA algorithm is preferred because it balances the profit and the required number of communications. When the communication cost is low, the m-ACBBA algorithm is preferred because it achieves high total profit and high percentage of scheduled urgent tasks.     

低轨卫星月影事件预报优化

针对卫星月影问题,提出了一种低轨卫星优化的月影预报策略,可以有效提高目前低轨卫星在轨管理时对月影事件预报的效率.结合仿真对产生月影事件的太阳、地球、月球的三体关系进行了分析,首先给出了月影产生的解析分析方法,并通过对一个三维月影影响模型的分析,得到了月影影响区间的判定要素——月影临界角;然后进一步通过对月影临界角的分析,提出了基于太阳与白道面的位置关系和月影临界角对低轨卫星月影事件的优化预报方法;最后基于大量的随机低轨卫星场景对本方法的正确性进行了验证.研究结果表明,此方法能够较大地提高月影预报效率,可以将月影预报频率从每月1次降低到每年2次,从而简化了低轨卫星在轨运行管理的任务复杂度,为卫星的在轨可靠运行提供支持.