Netlander Positioning with the Mars Infrastructure Constellation and its Impact on Martian Geodesy
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Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Wu, S..
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Mars has become the focus of an unprecedented series of missions spanning many years, involving numerous nations and evolving from robotics to humans.
The NASA's Space Technology 3 mission (ST-3) will demonstrate, among others, the newly developed Autonomous Formation Flyer (AFF) technology.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has intiated the design of a spacecraft constellation that will provide communication relay and navigation support for a variety of future Mars missions.
In February 1998 Student Nitric Oxide Explorer (SNOE) was successfully launched and began scientific observations.
Technology is currently available to support real-time on-board knowledge of the position of a low earth orbitor at the 5-15 meter level using the civilian broadcast GPS signal with sophisticated models and filtering techniques onboard the spacecraft.
The flight data have been combined at JPL with ground GPS data from a global network to routinely produce precise TOPEX/Poseidon orbits.
Geocentric Tracking Station coordinates can be measured with global positioning system.
Initial GPS results for the estimated location of the Earth's center of mass using 21 Rogue receiver sites from the GIG'91 global GPS campaign showed 10-15 cm agreement with satellite laser ranging.
This study of a more extensive suite of Slate Islands samples confirms previous interpretations. It indicates clearly that recorded shock pressures, as determined by planar deformation feature orientations, increased towards the center. The 'shock center' is very close (considering the structural movements during cavity modification) to that from an independent determination from shatter cone orientations. Shock metamorphism at a higher level in breccia clasts than in the adjacent country rocks is evidence that the shock event preceded the formation of the breccia dikes. These observations, which are consistent with those at other impact structures, are all contrary to the interpretation by Sage that breccia dike formation by diatreme action was the source of the shock event. There is no plausible reason to consider the Slate Islands as anything but the emergent portion of the central uplift of a complex impact crater. It cannot be cited as an example of endogenic shock in arguments regarding evidence of impact in the terrestrial stratigraphic record.
The reduced dynamic tracking technique has been applied for the first time as part of the GPS experiment on TOPEX/Poseidon.
The concept of using lunar beacon signal transmission for on-board navigation for earth satellites and near-earth spacecraft is described. The system would require powerful transmitters on the earth-side of the moon's surface and black box receivers with antennae and microprocessors placed on board spacecraft for autonomous navigation. Spacecraft navigation requires three position and three velocity elements to establish location coordinates. Two beacons could be soft-landed on the lunar surface at the limits of allowable separation and each would transmit a wide-beam signal with cones reaching GEO heights and be strong enough to be received by small antennae in near-earth orbit. The black box processor would perform on-board computation with one-way Doppler/range data and dynamical models. Alternatively, GEO satellites such as the GPS or TDRSS spacecraft can be used with interferometric techniques to provide decimeter-level accuracy for aircraft navigation.
The effects of clouds and rain on microwave apparent temperatures for a flat sea surface are examined. The presence of clouds and rain can be expressed as a change of absorption coefficient and the total absorption is computed as the sum of individual effects. Various cloud and rain models proposed by meteorologists are employed to compute the microwave apparent temperature when viewing downward through these model atmospheres. It is shown that stratus, cumulus, overcast, and rain all contribute significantly to the observed temperature. Larger sensitivities to clouds and rain are observed for horizontally polarized apparent temperature at large nadir angles than for vertically polarized apparent temperature.
Mechanisms of penetration and light emission for micrometeorite impact on an aluminum-coated photomultiplier
Penetration and light emission for micrometeorite impact of an aluminum-coated photomultiplier