ЛОСКУТНОЕ ОДЕЯЛО

[Wishbone]

Самый смак с конференции-спутника - Nuclear and Emerging Technologies in Space - 2012.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/program.pdf

Секция по моделированию ЯРД под руководством Стэна Боровски:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/sess262.pdf

Секция по СОТР ЯЭУ/ЯРД:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/sess261.pdf

Секция по французскому мегаваттному реактору, американским "беструбным" установкам, включению ЯЭУ на лунной/марсианской базе в цикл СОЖ и систему использования местных ресурсов
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/sess221.pdf

Секция по ТВЭЛам:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/sess412.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/sess422.pdf

Есть там и секция, которую надо в ЧД цитировать...

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http://www.livestream.com/lpsc2012 вроде как трансляция
там же есть записи видео

[Wishbone]

http://www.livestream.com/lpsc2012 вроде как трансляция
там же есть записи видео

Большущее спасибо, слушал открытие NETS'12... Пока ничего особенно нового, кроме оценки денег для "доводки" ЯРД - всего три миллиарда Стирлинг обещают сделать к окошку 2016, по автоматике будет защита проекта в последних числах апреля. Плач Ярославны по бюджету, и обещания дать стране плутоний-238 через 5-6 лет...

Это пленарка, будет время - буду смотреть секции.

P.S. Старшее руководство НАСА (Jim Green, директор PSD) далеко не так оптимистично:

PU-238 & RPS Status
• DoE passed FY12 Omnibus Appropriations:
– "The conferees provide no funds for the Plutonium-238 Production Restart Project"
• NASA/PSD has provided funding in FY12 to complete the necessary study and assessments
• Expect the assessment to be completed this FY
• Develop a new funding strategy to enable restart but with a larger share of the funding from NASA
• ASRG - will complete Engineering & Qual units and continue with life testing

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Delta 2 Seen as Front-runner for 3-Launch NASA Contract

WASHINGTON — NASA expects to order launches for three Earth science missions by the end of the summer, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) looks like the strongest contender for the job with its medium-lift Delta 2 rocket, an agency official said.

NASA sent a request for proposals to its current stable of approved launch services providers — ULA, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), Orbital Sciences Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. — in early February seeking bids for three missions: Soil Moisture Active-Passive, Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and the Joint Polar Satellite System-1. Proposals are due April 8, with the launches taking place from 2014-2017.

Steve Volz, associate director of flight programs in NASA's Earth Science Division, said only two of the approved NASA Launch Services 2 vendors, ULA and SpaceX, currently have rockets that meet the agency's criteria. But he said the limited flight heritage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket — two successes in two launches, with a third slated for April 30 — puts it at a disadvantage.

"Right now, the two possible proposals ... are the Delta 2 from ULA and the SpaceX Falcon 9," Volz told the NASA Advisory Council during a March 21 meeting here. "Delta 2 can bid, and they're certified; it's easy. Falcon 9, they may bid, but they haven't been certified, so there's a risk on those."

The Delta 2, which for years was the most reliable vehicle in the U.S. fleet, is out of production, but ULA has five of the vehicles remaining for sale. ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye confirmed March 22 that the company will be bidding the Delta 2 for the NASA contract.

SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Grantham said March 22 that her company will bid for at least a share of the work. "We are submitting a certification plan with our proposal," she said.

While Volz was skeptical that Falcon 9 could achieve NASA certification in time to launch any of the three upcoming missions, the vehicle is "likely to be a viable contender" for Earth science missions "that launch in 2018, 2019, 2020."

Jim Norman, director of the NASA Launch Services Program, said in a March 22 email that the launch solicitation is open to rockets that "will meet (at minimum) Category 2 certification" requirements. Those requirements call for one to three successful flights and a raft of NASA reviews.

NASA previously had given the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 launch contract to Orbital, but rescinded the award after an Orbital-built Taurus XL failure destroyed NASA's Glory climate-monitoring satellite last March. An earlier Taurus XL failure destroyed the original Orbiting Carbon Observatory craft.

"The Taurus XL isn't available until it's recertified," Volz said. "We're not going to be the next ones on that launch vehicle."

NASA has looked at using the U.S. Air Force Minotaur 4 rocket, assembled by Orbital using excess missile stages, but Volz said the agency is unlikely to go that route.

"If we get only proposals that are extremely expensive or extremely high risk, we have the avenue to continue to pursue the Minotaur 4," Volz said. "The likelihood is small. ... I don't expect it to happen."

NASA announced in 2007 that it would phase out the Delta 2 by the end of the decade because the rocket would be unaffordable in the absence of Air Force support. The Air Force had been the primary customer for the Delta 2 but stopped using the vehicle in 2009.

The Delta 2 last launched in October, when it delivered the Suomi NPP climate and weather satellite to orbit.

http://www.spacenews.com/launch/120323-delta2-frontrunnerlaunch-contract.html

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Немецкие астрономы создали "пульсар-GPS" для космических кораблей

МОСКВА, 30 мар - РИА Новости. Немецкие астрономы создали систему "космического GPS", которая умеет прокладывать курс и вычислять положение космического корабля с точностью до километра по излучению рентгеновских пульсаров, и представили ее миру на британской Национальной астрономической конференции в Манчестере.

Пульсары - вращающиеся с высокой скоростью нейтронные звезды, которые испускают строго периодические импульсы электромагнитного излучения. Ученые, впервые обнаружившие их в конце 1960-х годов, из-за такой периодичности сигналов приняли их за "голоса" внеземных цивилизаций. Однако эта особенность импульсов является следствием вращения пульсара - исходящие от его магнитных полюсов пучки электромагнитного излучения при вращении регулярно "задевают" Землю.

Группа астрофизиков под руководством Вернера Беккера (Werner Becker) из Института внеземной физики Общества Макса Планка в Гархинге (Германия) разработала методику, которая позволяет использовать строгую периодичность пульсаров для позиционирования космических кораблей в пределах Солнечной системы и в межзвездном пространстве.

Это не первая попытка использовать пульсары для создания системы "вселенской" навигации. В 2009 году российские ученые заявили, что Институт космических исследований РАН разрабатывает систему навигации на основе рентгеновских пульсаров. По замыслу астрофизиков, корабль будет определять свое положение по допплеровскому смещению - смещению частоты периодического сигнала в зависимости от приближения или удаления его источника, излучения пульсара.

Система Беккера и его коллег работает по другому алгоритму. Для ее функционирования необходимо найти три или более пульсара, которые будут использоваться в качестве "маяков". В точке отправления путешественник должен вычислить задержки, с которыми достигают корабля импульсы второго и третьего маяка относительно пульсаций первого.

Во время перелета измеряются те же самые задержки, после чего они сравниваются со значениями, полученными в исходной точке. Разница в задержках указывает на то, насколько далеко удалился корабль от исходного пункта.

Как полагают ученые, подобная система навигации может принести пользу уже сейчас, несмотря на отсутствие межзвездных кораблей. Такие устройства можно устанавливать на автономные межпланетные станции, направляющиеся в отдаленные области Солнечной системы, или же улучшать с их помощью существующие земные системы навигации.

"Эти рентгеновские "маяки" могут улучшить точность существующих систем навигации GPS или Galileo и станут основой автономных навигационных систем для межпланетных зондов и полета человека на Марс. А если думать о будущем, нам крайне приятно, что мы обладаем технологией, позволяющей прочертить путь к другим звездам. Вполне возможно, что она поможет нашим потомкам сделать первые шаги в межзвездное пространство", - заключает Беккер.

http://ria.ru/science/20120330/609619922.html

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Немного другое соотношение

Ученые пересмотрели главный метод датировки в геологии

Методов радиоизотопного датирования существует совсем немного. Еще меньше этих методов позволяют определять возраст объектов в миллионы и миллиарды лет. Одним из самых популярных является уран-свинцовый метод, который примечателен тем, что в 1953 году Клэр Кэмерон Паттерсон, геолог из Чикагского университета, с его помощью впервые достаточно точно определил возраст Земли. Тем удивительнее стала новость о том, что геологи предложили поправить этот метод - изменение, которое повлечет передатировку большинства крупных геологических событий.

Немного истории

Радиометрические методы, несмотря на существенные различия, базируются на одной достаточно простой идее. Имеется некоторый образец. Нам известно содержание двух изотопов - одного стабильного и одного не очень. Мы знаем, что стабильный получается из нестабильного в результате полураспада и даже знаем период этого полураспада с высокой точностью. В самом первом, "наивном", приближении предполагается, что, начиная с некоторого момента, ядерные процессы внутри образца идут вне зависимости от окружающей среды.

............

Новые результаты

Что же сделали ученые из США и Великобритании под руководством Джона Хайса в новой работе, опубликованной в Science? Они обратили внимание на то, что при сравнении работы двух изотопных часов внутри образца геологи используют соотношение изотопов урана 238U и 235U, которое считается постоянным и равным 137,88. При этом оказалось, что систематических исследований на эту тему не проводилось, а само число является результатом консенсуса между разными группами геологов.

В рамках работы ученые проанализировали содержание изотопов урана в 58 образцах циркона, собранных в разных регионах планеты. В результате они установили, что оно не является постоянным и лежит в пределах от 137,743 до 138,490. Как следствие, исследователи предлагают пересмотреть фундаментальное соотношение в пользу его небольшого уменьшения - они предлагают принять его равным 137,818 с погрешностью 0,045.

Новое предложение было принято многими специалистами положительно. Например, геохронолог из Калифорнийского университета Джеймс Мэттинсон заявил Nature News: "Люди, работающие в этой области, найдут много интересного в новой работе". Он также добавил, что результаты исследователей будут полезны для калибровки результатов различных измерений.

Сами ученые говорят, что из-за вносимой поправки возраст отдельных образцов может измениться на сотни тысяч, а иногда и миллионы лет. Это, в теории, приведет к пересмотру деталей существующей ныне геохронологической шкалы событий. Единственное, о чем ученые говорят с уверенностью - возраст Земли пересмотрен не будет. Это связано с тем, что данные по нему были подтверждены независимыми исследованиями.

Примечательно, что одновременно с работой Хайса появились данные о том, что другой радиометрический метод может потребовать пересмотра. Майкл Пол из Еврейского университета в Иерусалиме выяснил, что период полураспада самария-146, используемого в датировке по самарию-неодиму, может оказаться на 30 процентов короче, чем считалось до сих пор - "всего" 68 миллионов лет.

Все эти результаты показывают, что многие фундаментальные результаты в геологии могут потребовать пересмотра. Не кардинального, но все-таки довольно ощутимого. Это, в свою очередь, принесет науке множество новых результатов.

http://www.lenta.ru/articles/2012/03/30/dating/

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04.04.2012 / 08:48   Самолет НАСА протестирует над Гренландией прибор для спутника ICESat-2

Высотный научный самолет НАСА начал в небе над Гренландией работу по тестированию приборов для спутника ICESat-2, который в 2016 году планируется запустить для исследований ледового покрова в полярных областях, сообщает интернет-портал Arctic Portal.
      Для тестирования аппаратуры понадобится около месяца, все это время самолет будет базироваться в исландском международном аэропорту Кефлавик, говорится в сообщении.
      "Миссия ER-2 позволит протестировать новую методику дистанционного измерения таяния ледников с помощью лазерного устройства MABEL, аналог которого будет поставлен на спутнике ICESat-2", - приводит Arctic Portal цитату из сообщения посольства США в Исландии.
      Прибор MABEL (Multiple Altimeter Beam Experiment Lidar) представляет собой лазерное устройство для точных измерений площади льда, в перспективе - с околоземной орбиты. Его разработка и тестирование проходят в рамках проекта НАСА Operation IceBridge, по словам организаторов, "крупнейшего в области исследования полярных льдов", передает РИА Новости.

     - К.И.

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http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/50th/poll.cfm

Голосовалка за самые выдающиеся достижения в сфере АМС, в честь 50-летия Маринер-2.

Можно выбрать 5 вариантов (1-е - 5-е место).

Есть Луна-3, Луна-9, Луна-10, Венера-3, Венера-4, Зонд-5, Луна-16, Луноход-1, Венера-9, Веги.

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Текущий Top 10:

1. Boots on the Ground
Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin proved humans could live and work on another world.

2. Voyager Grand Tour
The twin Voyagers visited four planets, many moons and made many new discoveries.

3. Improving the View
For over twenty years the Hubble Space Telescope has taken many wonderful images -- from comet crashes to distant galaxies.

4. Kepler's Habitable Planets
Kepler discovered the first planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

5. Touchdown on Mars
Viking 1 sent back the first image from the surface of Mars.

6. Voyager's "Pale Blue Dot"
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us." -- Carl Sagan

7. Saturn: The View From Orbit
Cassini ushered in a new era in stunning imagery and science when it settled into orbit at Saturn.

8. First Look: Titan
The Huygens probe returned the first views of the surface of Saturn's mysterious moon Titan.

9. Red Planet Revealed
This Viking 2 color view from the surface of Mars remains an iconic image of the Red Planet.

10. Pathfinder: Six Wheels on Mars
The wagon-sized Sojourner rover proved robots could roam on another planet -- a first.

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ESA and NASA join forces to measure Arctic sea ice
4 April 2012

Marking another remarkable collaborative effort, ESA and NASA met up over the Arctic Ocean this week to perform some carefully coordinated flights directly under CryoSat orbiting above. The data gathered help ensure the accuracy of ESA's ice mission.
 
The aim of this large-scale campaign was to record sea-ice thickness and conditions of the ice exactly along the line traced by ESA's CryoSat satellite orbiting high above. A range of sensors installed on the different aircraft was used to gather complementary information.

These airborne instruments included simple cameras to get a visual record of the sea ice, laser scanners to clearly map the height of the ice, an ice-thickness sensor called EM-Bird along with ESA's sophisticated radar altimeter called ASIRAS and NASA's snow and Ku-band radars, which mimic CryoSat's measurements but at a higher resolution.  

In orbit for two years, CryoSat carries the first radar altimeter of its kind to monitor changes in the thickness of ice.

As with any Earth observation mission, it is important to validate the readings acquired from space. This involves comparing the satellite data with measurements taken in situ, usually on the ground and from the air.

The teams of scientists from Europe, US and Canada expect that by pooling flight time and the results they will get a much-improved accuracy of global ice-thickness trends measured by CryoSat and NASA's IceSat.

This will, in turn, lead to a better understanding of the impact of climate change on the Arctic environment.

Rene Forsberg, from the Technical University of Denmark's National Space Institute, said, "As a scientist I value the collaboration very much.

"Data from a particular instrument provides one piece of the puzzle. Through experience in combining gravity and altimetry measurements over ice sheets, I've found that by combining measurements from different instruments you can solve the puzzle more easily and move forward."

..........

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMQINEWF0H_index_0.html

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NASA Request for Information for Geostationary Earth Orbit Hosted Payload Opportunities and Accommodations
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=40451

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NASA to Fly Deep Space Atomic Clock to Improve Navigation Technology

When people think of space technologies, many think of high-tech solar panels, complex and powerful propulsion systems or sophisticated, electronic guidance systems. Another critical piece of spaceflight technology, however, is an ultra stable, highly accurate device for timing - essential to NASA's success on deep-space exploration missions.

NASA is preparing to fly a Deep Space Atomic Clock, or DSAC, demonstration that will revolutionize the way we conduct deep-space navigation by enabling a spacecraft to calculate its own timing and navigation data in real time. This one-way navigation technology would improve upon the current two-way system in which information is sent to Earth, requiring a ground team to calculate timing and navigation and then transmitting it back to the spacecraft. A real-time, on-board navigation capability is key to improving NASA's capabilities for executing time critical events, such as a planetary landing or planetary "fly-by," when signal delays are too great for the ground to interact with the spacecraft during the event.

"Adopting DSAC on future NASA missions will increase navigation and radio science data quantity by two to three times, improve data quality by up to 10 times and reduce mission costs by shifting toward a more flexible and extensible one-way radio navigation architecture," said Todd Ely, principal investigator of the Deep Space Atomic Clock Technology Demonstration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The project is part of NASA's Technology Demonstration Missions program, managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist in Washington.

The one-way deep space navigation enabled by DSAC uses the existing deep space network more efficiently than the current two-way system, thus expanding the network's capacity without adding any new antennas or their associated costs. This is important, since future human exploration of deep space will demand more tracking from the deep space network than can currently be delivered with the existing system.

"The Deep Space Atomic Clock flight demonstration mission will advance this laboratory-qualified technology to flight readiness and will make a practical atomic clock available to a variety of space missions," Ely said.

The clock is a miniature mercury-ion atomic device the DSAC team will fly as a payload on an Earth orbiter in a one-year experiment to validate its operability in space and its usefulness for one-way navigation.

"A potential use for DSAC on a future mission would be in a follow-up to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter," Ely said. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched to Mars in 2005 on a search for evidence that water existed on the planet's surface for enough time to provide a habitat for life. The orbiter completed its primary science phase in 2008 and continues to work in an extended mission. Atomic clocks are the most accurate timekeeping method known and are used as the primary standard for international time distribution services -- to control the frequency of television broadcasts, and in global navigation satellite systems such as the Global Positioning System.

Ground-based atomic clocks have long been the cornerstone of most space vehicle navigation because they provide root data necessary for precise positioning. DSAC will deliver the same stability and accuracy for spacecraft exploring the solar system. In much the same way that modern Global Positioning Systems, or GPS, use one-way signals to enable terrestrial navigation services, the Deep Space Atomic Clock will provide a similar capability in deep-space navigation -- with such extreme accuracy that researchers will be required to carefully account for the effects of relativity, or the relative motion of an observer and an observed object, as impacted by gravity, space and time. Clocks in GPS-based satellite, for example, must be corrected to account for this effect, or their navigational fixes begin to drift.

In the laboratory setting, the Deep Space Atomic Clock's precision has been refined to permit drift of no more than one nanosecond in 10 days, due to the work of NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Over the past 20 years, they have been steadily improving and miniaturizing the mercury-ion trap atomic clock, preparing it to operate in the harsh environment of deep space.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/clock/dsac.html



A laboratory representation of the Deep Space Atomic Clock, with a quarter alongside the unit for size comparison. (NASA/JPL)



Artist concept of Deep Space Atomic Clock and global communiations. (NASA/JPL)

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NASA Selects Space Systems/Loral Platform to Help Enable Next Era of Space Communications

Space Systems/Loral today announced that it is teaming with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to host a laser communications relay demonstration (LCRD) on a commercial satellite to be launched in 2016. NASA 's Space Technology Program selected Goddard's mission proposal to use the SS/L satellite platform to help enable the next era of space communications.

Optical communications use an uncongested portion of spectrum compared to the radio frequency (RF) communications currently used to transmit data from space. Additionally, laser communications (lasercom) has the potential to provide order of magnitude higher data rates than RF, providing the potential to enable access to much more of the vast amounts of data that are being gathered from distant planets, including images and video. For commercial satellites, lasercom could provide data at rates that are faster than today's RF rates, with much less mass and power, which are the typical constraints on satellite design.

"We are excited to be a part of this mission, which is particularly interesting because of the great potential for laser communications to revolutionize space exploration as well as the commercial satellite industry," said John Celli, president of Space Systems/Loral. Space Systems/Loral is working with NASA Goddard's LCRD team to determine the technical requirements for the instruments to be integrated with the SS/L 1300 satellite platform. As the optical modules and ground stations are in development, SS/L will work with its commercial customers to identify an appropriate host satellite for the demonstration.

"The Space Systems/Loral platform provides NASA with the opportunity to demonstrate new technology on an operational satellite," said Michael Weiss, Project Manager, at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Once proven, the technology that we are demonstrating will revolutionize future communication systems. The use of optical communication technologies in a network environment will meet the growing needs of high data rate user demands while also enabling lower mass and power for space and ground communication systems."

The Space Systems/Loral platform is particularly well-suited to hosted payloads because of its size and high power capability and SS/L has many years of success in integrating government payloads onto commercial spacecraft. The company built Intelsat-14, which hosted the first commercial Internet Router in Space (IRIS) and was successfully launched in 2009. SS/L also built Optus-C1 for Singtel Optus, which was launched in 2003. Optus-C1 provides commercial communications services in Australia and also hosts a UHF payload for the Australian Defense Force. SS/L also integrated a navigation payload for the European Union onto SES-5, which is scheduled to launch later this year. "We are fortunate to have this opportunity to collaborate with the visionaries on the Goddard Space Flight Center team," said Al Tadros, Vice President, Government and Civil Missions at Space Systems/Loral. "By selecting this project, NASA's Space Technology Program is not only investigating next generation technologies, but it is taking the lead in leveraging the benefit of commercial satellites for faster and less costly access to space. We applaud NASA for being proactive in the face of austere budgets to ensure continued science and technology advances."

Lasercom, which is also known as free-space optical communications, operates in the mid-wave infrared band of the electromagnetic spectrum, around 200 Terahertz (THz). This un-regulated and un-licensed part of the spectrum, which is eye safe, is four orders of magnitude higher than the radio propagation bands used today for satellite and other wireless communications, which are approximately 20 Gigahertz (GHz). The corresponding increase in bandwidth effectively eliminates spectrum as a constraint for all applications, including the highest resolution imagery payloads and scientific sensors.

The lasercom spectrum is lightly used; however, due to its very narrow beam widths compared to RF, even if it were heavily used, multi-user interference is not a limiting capacity factor. Compared to high bandwidth RF links, lasercom terminals are approximately one order of magnitude lower in size, weight and power consumption, and are therefore suitable as hosted payloads over a broad range of satellites and spacecraft.

http://spaceref.com/commercial-space/nasa-selects-space-systemsloral-platform-to-help-enable-next-era-of-space-communications.html

[testest]

Про часы, только на русском:

В рамках проекта The Deep Space Atomic Clock NASA опубликовало первое фото прототипа бортовых высокоточных атомных часов для космических аппаратов. Фото и их описания доступны на сайте проекта.

В основе созданных учеными портативных атомных часов ионы ртути, помещенные в линейную ионную ловушку. Роль маятника в таких часах играет процесс перехода электрона между разными энергетическими уровнями в ионе под воздействием лазера. Пока в лабораторных условиях исследователям удалось достичь стабильности полученного устройства в одну наносекунду за 10 дней. Точность новых часов превысит существующие аналоги на порядок.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock разрабатывается в рамках программы Technology Demonstration Missions. Помимо часов в эту программу входят солнечный парус и система лазерной коммуникации с космическими аппаратами - скорость работы такой системы будет превосходить существующие (радио-)аналоги на два порядка. На разработку каждого проекта NASA выделяет 175 миллионов долларов.

Проект с часами планируется испытать в ближайшие три года. Технология оптической коммуникации потребует как минимум четыре года для практической реализации. Запуски проектов намечены на 2015 и 2016 годы.

http://lenta.ru/news/2012/04/11/nasa/

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Designing the interplanetary web
 
13 April 2012

Reliable Internet access on the Moon, near Mars or for astronauts on a space station? How about controlling a planetary rover from a spacecraft in deep space? These are just some of the pioneering technologies that ESA is working on for future exploration missions.
 
What do observation or navigation satellites orbiting Earth have in common with astronauts sending images in real time from the International Space Station? They all need to send data back home. And the complexity of sharing information across space is set to grow.

In the future, rovers on Mars or inhabited bases on the Moon will be supported by orbiting satellite fleets providing data relay and navigation services. Astronauts will fly to asteroids, hundreds of millions of kilometres from Earth, and they'll need to link up with other astronauts, control centres and sophisticated systems on their vessels.

All of these activities will need to be interconnected, networked and managed.  

Supporting future exploration
 
"We are researching how today's technical standards for devices like mobile phones, laptops and portable computers can be applied to a new generation of networked space hardware," says Nestor Peccia, responsible for ground segment software development at ESA's Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

"But our future focus goes well beyond just networking; we're looking at how agencies like ESA and NASA cooperate in orbit and how to interchange data in real time between different organisations' spacecraft and ground stations, as well as reliable technical standards for spacecraft navigation and flight control."
 
Open technical standards through cooperation
 
Since 1982, experts from ESA, NASA and other major space organisations and industry have met periodically to develop new, open data communication standards as part of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems.
 
Developing standards for space hardware and data interchange for space agencies, commercial spaceflight companies and satellite manufacturers promises to pay off even in the short term.

In the future, inter-satellite communication requirements are predicted to grow, and spacecraft should be capable of establishing powerful radio links with each other – even while orbiting Mars at thousands of kilometres per hour.
 
In May 2008, ESA's Mars Express served as a crucial data relay node for NASA's Phoenix lander during descent and landing on the Red planet. Mars Express is set to repeat the feat in August with NASA's Mars Science Laboratory.

In December 2011, ESA's worldwide tracking station network was recruited to provide three hours' daily data contact for Russian mission controllers operating the Phobos–Grunt mission en route to Mars (the probe failed soon after launch for unrelated reasons).
 
Astronaut–machine interfaces at Mars
 
In October, ESA astronaut Andr

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NASA Picks Loral for $230M Laser Com Demo

PARIS — NASA is investing $230 million in an experiment to test laser optical communications between a geostationary-orbiting satellite and a NASA ground terminal in the United States in an unusual hosted-payload contract with satellite builder Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), NASA and SS/L said.

The 175-kilogram Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) terminal, now in development at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will be placed aboard a yet-unselected commercial telecommunications satellite that Palo Alto, Calif.-based SS/L hopes to have ready for launch as soon as 2016.

The LCRD terminal would permit high-speed communication of data between the satellite and a NASA-developed ground terminal to be located in the western United States, meaning that whatever commercial satellite SS/L finds for the experiment will need to have a look angle over the United States. NASA has said it is tentatively planning LCRD ground stations in Hawaii and Southern California, taking advantage of work being done for NASA's Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission to lunar orbit scheduled for 2013.

A supplemental LADEE payload will test laser links between lunar orbit and Earth. The LADEE laser terminal is being built by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center in Lexington, Mass.

LCRD will be NASA's first hosted-payload arrangement. Unlike most hosted-payload contracts, in which a satellite owner negotiates with the owner of the hosted payload, NASA has contracted with SS/L to manage the entire process, meaning SS/L will find a suitable commercial customer and negotiate contract terms with the customer within a NASA-fixed budget that is paid to SS/L, according to Michael Weiss, LCRD project manager at Goddard Space Flight Center.

That will mean SS/L will be responsible for compensating the satellite owner for the on-board power — 600 watts — that the laser terminal requires, and for a share of the launch costs.

In an April 12 interview, Weiss said NASA would like to operate the LCRD for two years. He said NASA received several bids for the contract before settling on the SS/L bid.

Given the normal two- to three-year cycle of satellite production, it is likely that the satellite has not yet been contracted. In a statement, SS/L said that the optical module and the ground stations that will communicate with it are still in development, and that SS/L "will work with its commercial customers to identify an appropriate host satellite for the demonstration."

In addition to being the most successful supplier of commercial telecommunications satellites in recent years among U.S. builders, SS/L has specialized in large, high-power spacecraft — 20 kilowatts of on-board power is not uncommon — that presumably would find it easier to accommodate the LCRD than a smaller or lower-power spacecraft.

Most commercial telecommunications satellites are launched aboard European or Russian rockets, a market reality that could pose difficulties for NASA if it views hosted payloads as a promising new avenue to test technology without paying for an entire satellite and launch. Current U.S. government policy prohibits the use of a non-U.S. vehicle to launch U.S. government hardware if a U.S. alternative is available, unless the mission receives a specific waiver.

But Weiss said the LCRD mission may not need to seek a waiver. He said the agency is formulating a hosted-payload policy that reflects the new hosted-payload opportunities for which NASA is not the host agency.

The use of laser terminals for satellite communications — both between satellites in orbit and between satellites and ground terminals — has been the focus of much investment in Europe, but less so in the United States.

The French and German governments have sponsored laser communications terminals to fly aboard a geostationary-orbiting data-relay satellite that communicated with low-orbiting Earth observation spacecraft carrying similar terminals. More recently, Germany's Tesat Spacecom of Backnang, Germany, has sold laser terminals for use by the 19-nation European Space Agency (ESA) and the 27-nation European Union as part of their Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program.

ESA has contracted with Astrium Services of Europe to manage a data-relay service that will use laser terminals on two geostationary-orbiting satellites to speed Earth observation data delivery to ground users from low-orbiting GMES satellites.

Tesat had hoped that a large U.S. government demand for laser terminals would follow the successful use of laser terminals to exchange data between the German government's TerraSAR-X radar Earth observation satellite and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Near Field Infrared Experiment, or NFIRE, missile-warning satellite. TerraSAR-X and NFIRE, each equipped with a Tesat-built laser communications terminal, exchanged reproducible data at speeds of 5.5 gigabits per second for several months in 2008 following a bilateral U.S.-German government agreement, according to Tesat.

Despite a Tesat agreement with Fairfax, Va.-based General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems to promote the Tesat technology in the United States, the U.S. government demand has not materialized, and Tesat has focused on European government programs.

Laser communications have the advantage of operating in a section of the electromagnetic spectrum whose frequencies are not regulated by the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations affiliate.

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/120410-loral-host-payload-nasa-lasercom.html

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Call for Media: CryoSat's first map of changes in sea-ice thickness
 
18 April 2012

Media representatives are invited to attend the unveiling of the first map of the winter 2010–11 changes in Arctic sea-ice thickness measured by ESA's ice mission. The event will take place on 24 April at the Royal Society in London.
 
Launched in April 2010, CryoSat's main objective is to measure the thickness of polar sea-ice and monitor changes in the ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.

In June 2011, the first map of Arctic sea-ice thickness was unveiled. Now, the complete 2010–11 winter season data have been processed to produce the first seasonal variation map of sea-ice thickness.  

Owing to the high rate of change in the Arctic Ocean, this has a special relevance for climate change research.

Other significant results from this collaborative European mission will be presented and discussed, with perspectives from UK industrial and scientific communities.

This event is being jointly organised by ESA and the UK Space Agency as part of the wider celebration of the 50th anniversary of the UK in space.

View event programme.

A live web stream of the event will be accessible through ESA's Earth observation page at http://www.esa.int/esaEO/index.html .

For more information on the mission, visit the CryoSat website at http://www.esa.int/cryosat .

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM768KWZ0H_index_0.html

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Pioneer Anomaly Solved!
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003459/





by Bruce Betts

With the latest piece of the puzzle just published in a scientific journal, a solar system mystery that has perplexed people for more than 20 years has been solved, truly thanks to the support of Planetary Society members. That mystery is the "Pioneer Anomaly," an anomalous acceleration that affected the two Pioneer spacecraft as they left the solar system.

Pioneers 10 and 11 were launched in the early 1970's. As they traveled away from the Sun, they slowed down. Most of this slowing was expected, a result of the gravitational pull of the Sun and other massive objects in the solar system. But even when everything in the solar system whose mass could have any effect on the Pioneers was accounted for, both spacecraft were found to be slowing more than expected. The excess slowing was very tiny, but measurable.

Over the course of the past two decades, all sorts of solutions have been proposed, some of which invoked exotic "new" physics. In the end, recovery of more data and years of painstaking work have shown that no such exotic solution is necessary, but rather that anisotropic (big word for not-symmetric-in-all-directions) thermal radiation (big words for heat) can explain the mystery. This solution had already been suggested, and examination of the problem over time had made it seem increasingly likely, but only careful analyses could check whether anisitropic radiation could explain the anomaly. The latest piece of this analysis appears in a new scientific article by Slava Turyshev and colleagues.

The only way to solve this mystery was to look at much more data than had previously been available. That is where Planetary Society members stepped in. A few years ago, Slava Turyshev and his colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were in desperate need of funding to help them do just that. With funds supplied by our members, Turyshev successfully chased down data from a number of sources. This was not an easy (or quick) task. These missions lasted for more than 30 years. Imagine all the people, computing formats, and hardcopy and electronic storage devices involved over that period, and you'll start to get an idea of the problem.

As Slava mentioned to us before, "We recovered more data than we dared dream possible. Without the rescue of the Doppler data, we would have been blind, never able to claim the quantitative data we need to solve the anomaly. The recovery of Doppler and telemetry data and the entire effort in thermal analysis would not have happened without the Planetary Society."

After they recovered the data, they had decades of Doppler data to analyze. That told them the true nature of the acceleration – the anomaly -- and how it acted over time including that it varied, rather than staying constant. See this discussion for more details on their Doppler results as well as more background on the Pioneer Anomaly.

To really nail down whether a thermal explanation alone could explain the anomaly required detailed thermal modeling of the spacecraft, and that is the focus of the new paper. This also could not have been accomplished without the saving of data facilitated by Planetary Society members. That process turned up spacecraft schematics used to construct the model, but also turned up data on spacecraft temperatures during the mission. The latter allowed comparison of real temperatures in a few locations with the model.

Why was the thermal emission from the spacecraft anisotropic and slowing the spacecraft down? First of all, because the Pioneer spacecraft were spin-stabilized and almost always pointed their big dishes towards Earth. Second of all, because two sources of thermal radiation (heat) were then on the leading side of the spacecraft. The nuclear power sources, more formally Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG), emitted heat towards the back side of the dishes. When the dishes reflected or re-radiated this heat, it went in the direction of travel of the spacecraft. Also, the warm electronics box for the spacecraft was on the leading side of the spacecraft, causing more heat to spill that direction. Photon pressure, the same type of thing used in solar sailing, then preferentially pushed against the direction of travel, causing a tiny, but measurable, deceleration of the spacecraft – the Pioneer Anomaly.

These results once emphasize three things to me: the power of more data, the power of careful scientific analysis, and the power of Planetary Society members getting involved at critical times. In addition to providing the solution to a long-term solar system mystery, the technical results of these studies will be useful for planning the details of future spacecraft navigation.

You can find the latest scientific paper, being published in Physical Review Letters, here: "Support for the thermal origin of the Pioneer anomaly" by Slava G. Turyshev, Viktor T. Toth, Gary Kinsella, Siu-Chun Lee, Shing M. Lok, and Jordan Ellis.

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«Пионеры» оказались оснащены космическими двигателями, не предусмотренными создателями

Легендарные «Пионеры» уже давно вызывают у научного сообщества тягостное недоумение своими траекториями: выйдя за пределы Солнечной системы, они всё больше отклонялись от той «тропинки», которая была задана им при отправке. Подозреваемыми по этому удивительному делу пробовали назвать уже и тёмную материю, и тёмную энергию, но недавняя работа группы американских исследователей под руководством Вячеслава Турищева показывает, что ларчик открывается совершенно не так: оказывается, конструкторы зондов, сами того не заметив, оснастили их двигателем, самопроизвольная работа которого и отклонила траектории «Пионеров» столь сильно.

Напомним: ранее та же исследовательская группа полагала, что причиной странной траектории стала неравномерная тепловая отдача «Пионеров». Однако выяснилось, что реальное отклонение превышает спрогнозированное по этой модели. И тогда начался поиск других «виноватых».

Согласно наблюдениям, после выхода за пределы орбиты Плутона «Пионеры» постепенно получили дополнительное ускорение по направлению к Солнцу (меньшее, чем ускорение свободного падения на поверхности Земли, примерно в 10 млрд раз). Оно превышало то, которое, по расчётам, могла вызвать гравитация нашей звезды или планет Солнечной системы. Явление настолько обеспокоило учёных, что даже получило специальное название — «аномалия "Пионера"».

Исследовательская группа г-на Турищева провела численное моделирование ускорения и выяснила, что со временем оно меняется (уменьшается) по экспоненте. Это отвергает возможность неравномерного теплового излучения как причины явления (неравномерность отдачи тепла в пространстве у «Пионеров» неизменна). Однако радиоизотопные источники энергии, обеспечивающие бортовые системы КА энергией, несут плутоний-238, распад которого со временем экспоненциально падает, так как по мере распада плутония его становится всё меньше. Вот только проблема в том, что моделирование снижения ускорения «Пионеров» показывает: оно упало наполовину за 27 лет, в то время как полураспад плутония-238 длится 88 лет.

В чём же дело? Учёные вновь взялись за моделирование — на сей раз систем, которые способны испускать в космос тепло, порождаемое радиоизотопными источниками питания. Каждый «Пионер» имеет научную аппаратуру, обращённую от Солнца, в направлении глубокого космоса. Её тепловое излучение оказалось несколько больше, чем на солнечной стороне аппарата, лишённой множества выступающих частей. В то же время радиоизотопные источники, смонтированные внутри КА, излучали относительно равномерно во все стороны и почти не имели прямого влияния на траекторию зондов.

По Турищеву, термопары в радиоизотопных термоэлектрических генераторах с годами стали хуже преобразовывать тепловую энергию распада в электрическую. По мере падения их КПД количество энергии, которая поступала к научной аппаратуре, смонтированной на нацеленной в глубокий космос части аппарата, всё уменьшалось и уменьшалось. Следовательно, падение ускорения превысило тот уровень уменьшения ускорения, который вытекал бы лишь из одного распада плутония.

По сути, «Пионеры» оказались оснащены новым двигателем, который не потребовал ни капли дополнительных затрат и при этом смог за пару десятилетий придать аппарату довольно значительное ускорение (и скорость).

Условно его можно назвать тепловым излучающим двигателем, чем-то вроде солнечного паруса наоборот. Бесспорно, при любой будущей отправке КА, нацеленного за пределы Солнечной системы (или даже просто на работу за транснептуновыми орбитами), этот фактор «бесплатного тормозящего двигателя» должен учитываться при планировании миссий, так как он может серьёзно повлиять на точность следования по заданному маршруту.

Немаловажно и то, что использование относительно мощных средств связи с Землёй, при котором также происходит значимое тепловыделение, тоже может оказаться фактором, заметно влияющим на этот раз на полезное для КА направленное за пределы Солнечной системы ускорение.

http://science.compulenta.ru/673811/
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/apr/16/exotic-explanation-for-pioneer-anomaly-ruled-out

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ykpoi пишет:
 Про часы, только на русском:

http://lenta.ru/news/2012/04/11/nasa/

-А что за лампа на переднем плане по горизонтале- 6П3С или мощнее, кто подскажет?