Formation Flying Satellites: Control By an Astrodynamicist

Satellites flying in formation is a concept being pursued by the Air Force and NASA. Potential periodic formation orbits have been identified using Hill's (or Clohessy Wiltshire) equations. Unfortunately the gravitational perturbations destroy the periodicity of the orbits and control will be required to maintain the desired orbits. Since fuel will be one of the major factors limiting the system lifetime it is imperative that fuel consumption be minimized. To maximize lifetime we not only need to find those orbits which require minimum fuel we also need for each satellite to have equal fuel consumption and this average amount needs to be minimized. Thus, control of the system has to be addressed, not just control of each satellite. In this paper control of the individual satellites as well as the constellation is addressed from an astrodynamics perspective.     

The BepiColombo Mercury surface element

Several versions of a Mercury surface element, part of the ESA BepiColombo Mercury Cornerstone mission to be launched in 2009, have been studied. The major constraint on system design has been the need to maximise the useful system mass on the surface of Mercury. The absence of atmosphere on the planet forces the adoption of a purely propulsive descent and landing system. The need to maintain the shock level at landing below limits which are acceptable to the payload imposes the adoption of a precise guidance, navigation & control system, which allows a drastic reduction of the landing speed, and therefore the adoption of an airbag landing system. Surface mobility is an obvious requirement for the purpose of geochemical exploration, since selected rocks have a much higher scientific yield than the average regolith. Geophysical investigations require that thermal, accelerometric, and densitometric probes be brought in contact with subsurface regions, to a depth of several metres. Magnetometric measurements may need deployment of sensors to some distance from the bulk of the lander body. The thermal environment on the surface of Mercury is extreme, even in the polar regions that will be targeted by the BepiColombo lander, while the solar flux rises seasonally to 10 times the one experienced in Earth orbit. The need to provide a low-temperature heat sink to sensors is particularly critical, if these are installed on a small-size, small-mass mobile deployment device. A consequence of the landing in a polar region will be the extremely variable lighting conditions, with extended portions of the surface shrouded in darkness by any small surface obstacle. Limitations on communications between Earth and the deployed payload will be caused by the low available data rate and by visibility windows (contact may be restricted to as little as <10 min every 9.5 h). This will impose a high degree of autonomy to be built into the payload systems.     

马面卵巢在不同贮藏温度下磷脂成分的变化

在20℃、4℃、-10℃、-20℃四种温度下贮藏马面卵巢，对其中磷脂含量的变化进行了测定，并利用薄层层析分析测定了不同温度下贮存3d后马面卵巢中磷脂各组分的相对百分比。结果表明马面卵巢中磷脂的损失率随贮藏温度的上升而增加；在不同温度下贮藏3d，磷脂各组分的相对百分比都发生了变化；随贮藏温度的升高磷脂酰胆碱的降解速度大大加快，所占的百分比快速下降，而溶血磷脂酰胆碱的比例有不同程度的增加。相对而言，-20℃下贮藏数天，磷脂的含量及组分的变化较小。     

CSCO_3 CYCLES IN SALAWUSU RIVER BASINSINCE 150KA B.P.

About 70years ago，Frenc卜卜alaeohdoglst回LL sc卜dars al卜ome and a卜road卜ave successively con－HARD de Chardin P．et al．Initiated the Quaternary ducted large amount ofwork on the Later Quaternarygeologlcal research In the ＞alawusu River Basin of strata（TEILHARD，1924； YUAN，1978； LI，1987；desert region of Northern China and established th，ZHENG，1989； SUN et al，1996； LI et al，1993），Salawusu Formation门EILHARD，1924）．Sine，then，palaeobiology…     

Numerical calculations in the orbital determination of an artificial satellite for a long arc

Numerical methods are usually used for the computation of ephemerides with perturbations for the precise orbital determination of an artificial satellite. But their numerical stability will be encountered in a long arc. In this case the use the improved Encke special perturbation methods has been suggested. The results of this paper show that Encke's method does indeed have a certain effectiveness, but cannot yet completely resolve the numerical stability, and the more efficient method is to use the energy integral or its variational relation to control the growth of the along-track error in general numerical calculations so that the aim of stabilization can be achieved.     

Rotational broadening and Doppler tomography of the quiescent X-ray nova Centaurus X-4

We present a library of 47 open-cluster integrated spectra, mostly obtained at CASLEO (San Juan, Argentina) in the range  3600 < λ < 7400 Å  , which are made available at CDS. The data are combined with previous spectra to obtain 10 high signal-to-noise ratio basic templates in the young and intermediate-age domains, which are also provided in the library. These Galactic disc templates represent the increased time resolution spectral evolution of a stellar population unit around the Solar metallicity level. The improved signal-to-noise ratio of the present templates with respect to previous template lists, together with their increased time resolution, allowed us to improve the fundamental parameters of some open clusters. The present spectral library will be useful for several astrophysical applications, particularly for population syntheses of star-forming giant galaxies.     

Multiple stellar populations in the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy?

We present wide-field     multiband ( BVI ) CCD photometry (down to     of the very low surface brightness dwarf spheroidal galaxy Sextans. In the derived colour–magnitude diagrams we find evidence suggesting the presence of multiple stellar populations in this dwarf spheroidal. In particular, we discover (i) a blue horizontal branch tail that appears to lie on a brighter sequence with respect to the prominent red horizontal branch and the RR Lyrae stars, very similar to what was found by Majewski et al. for the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal, (ii) hints of a bimodal distribution in colour of the red giant branch stars, (iii) a double red giant branch bump. All of these features suggest that (at least) two components are present in the old stellar population of this galaxy: the main one with     and a minor component around     . The similarity to the Sculptor case may indicate that multiple star formation episodes are also common in the most nearby dwarf spheroidals that ceased their star formation activity at very early epochs.     

Optical Flash of GRB 990123: Constraints on the Physical Parameters of the Reverse Shock

The optical flash accompanying GRB 990123 is believed to be powered by the reverse shock of a thin shell. With the best-fit physical parameters for GRB 990123 and the assumption that the parameters in the optical flash are the same as in the afterglow, we show that: 1) the shell is thick rather than thin, and we have provided the light curve for the thick shell case which coincides with the observation; 2) the theoretical peak flux of the optical flash accounts for only 3×10~-4 of the observed. In order to remove this discrepancy, the physical parameters, the electron energy and magnetic ratios, εe and εB, should be 0.61 and 0.39, which are very different from their values for the late afterglow.