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NASA NTRS1997

Super-Low-Mass Spaceborne SAR Array Concepts

For Earth remote sensing applications, a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) typically employs an antenna with a fairly long along-track aperture in order to achieve the desired performance. To maintain an acceptable electrical flatness along this long aperture, very massive antenna support structures, weighing several hundred kilograms or more, have been used to date. To achieve good launch volume efficiency and to reduce payload weight, three super-low-mass array concepts are proposed and described here. With these new concepts, the mass of future Earth remote sensing SAR antennas is expected to be less than 100 kg.

antennas↗

NASA NTRS2011

Simple, Robust Cryogenic Propellant Depot for Near Term Applications

The ability to refuel cryogenic propulsion stages on-orbit provides an innovative paradigm shift for space transportation supporting National Aeronautics and Space Administration s (NASA) Exploration program as well as deep space robotic, national security and commercial missions. Refueling enables large beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) missions without requiring super heavy lift vehicles that must continuously grow to support increasing mission demands as America s exploration transitions from early Lagrange point missions to near Earth objects (NEO), the lunar surface and eventually Mars. Earth-to-orbit launch can be optimized to provide competitive, cost-effective solutions that allow sustained exploration. This paper describes an experimental platform developed to demonstrate the major technologies required for fuel depot technology. This test bed is capable of transferring residual liquid hydrogen (LH2) or liquid oxygen (LO2) from a Centaur upper stage, and storage in a secondary tank for up to one year on-orbit. A dedicated, flight heritage spacecraft bus is attached to an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) ring supporting experiments and data collection. This platform can be deployed as early as Q1 2013. The propellant depot design described in this paper can be deployed affordably this decade supporting missions to Earth-Moon Lagrange points and lunar fly by. The same depot concept can be scaled up to support more demanding missions and launch capabilities. The enabling depot design features, technologies and concept of operations are described.

McLean, Christopher↗

NASA NTRS1997

Super-Low-Mass Spaceborne SAR Array Concepts

For Earth remote sensing applications, a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) typically employs an antenna with a fairly long along-track aperture in order to achieve the desired performance. At orbital velocities, the antenna along-track dimension is driven by a careful trade off between resolution, swath width, and available data rate and is independent of wavelength. 10 to 20 m long antennas have been flown or proposed in previous spaceborne SAR designs. To maintain an acceptable electrical flatness across this long aperture, very massive antenna support structures, weighing several hundred kilograms or more, have been used to date. For example, the fixed-beam L-band SeaSat antenna, which used a microstrip array with honeycomb substrate, had a mass of 250 Kg (including deployment mechanism). The beam-scanning L/C/X-band shuttle-based SIR-C antenna has a mass of l,800 Kg. These massive antenna systems generally require a launch vehicle with large stowage volume and heavy-payload-lift capability. To achieve good launch volume efficiency and to reduce payload weight, three super-low-mass array concepts are proposed and described here. With these new concepts, the mass of the future Earth remote sensing SAR antennas is expected to be less than 100 Kg.

Huang, J.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Constraints on the Formation of the Moon from High-Precision ND-Isotopic Measurements of Lunar Basalts

The most widely accepted theory for the formation of the Earth-Moon system proposes a giant impact model, where Earth collided in its later stages of accretion with a body of the approximate size of Mars [1, 2]. In this model, the Moon ultimately formed from hot debris generated during this giant impact. Short-lived radioisotopes such as Sm-146 (t(sub 1/2) = 103 Ma) may be useful in determining the chronology of the events that formed the Earth-Moon system and for how these terrestrial bodies evolved following accretion. New high-precision samarium-neodymium data showed that chondritic meteorites are on average 20 ppm lower in 142Nd/144Nd than terrestrial samples [3]. These data suggest that if the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) has a Sm/Nd ratio within the range measured for chondrites, the higher-than-chondritic Nd-142/Nd-144 ratio of terrestrial materials requires that the silicate Earth experienced a global chemical differentiation during the lifetime of Sm-146. If the Moon has super-chondritic Nd-142/Nd-144 identical to the Earth, as suggested by available data [4], then the giant impact must have occurred into an already differentiated Earth, predominantly sampling the Nd-depleted reservoir. In order to test this hypothesis, high-precision Nd-isotope ratios were obtained on a Thermo-Finnigan Triton TIMS for six lunar basalts that span the compositional range of lavas from the Moon: Samples 15555 and LAP 02205 represent low-Ti basalts; 70017 and 74275 are high-Ti basalts; 15386 and SAU 169 are KREEP basalts.

Rankenburg, K.↗

NASA NTRS2007

KML Super Overlay to WMS Translator

This translator is a server-based application that automatically generates KML super overlay configuration files required by Google Earth for map data access via the Open Geospatial Consortium WMS (Web Map Service) standard. The translator uses a set of URL parameters that mirror the WMS parameters as much as possible, and it also can generate a super overlay subdivision of any given area that is only loaded when needed, enabling very large areas of coverage at very high resolutions. It can make almost any dataset available as a WMS service visible and usable in any KML application, without the need to reformat the data.

Plesea, Lucian↗

NASA NTRS2003

Meshed-Pumpkin Super-Pressure Balloon Design

An improved, lightweight design has been proposed for super-pressure balloons used to carry scientific instruments at high altitudes in the atmosphere of Earth for times as long as 100 days. [A super-pressure balloon is one in which the pressure of the buoyant gas (typically, helium) is kept somewhat above ambient pressure in order to maintain approximately constant density and thereby regulate the altitude.] The proposed design, called "meshed pumpkin," incorporates the basic concept of the pumpkin design, which is so named because of its appearance. The pumpkin design entails less weight than does a spherical design, and the meshed-pumpkin design would reduce weight further. The basic idea of the meshed-pumpkin design is to reinforce the membrane of a pumpkin balloon by attaching a strong, lightweight fabric mesh to its outer surface. The reinforcement would make it possible to reduce the membrane mass to one-third or less of that of the basic pumpkin design while retaining sufficient strength to enable the balloon to remain at approximately constant altitude for months.

Jones, Jack↗

NASA NTRS1983

Electromagnetic deep-probing (100-1000 kms) of the Earth's interior from artificial satellites: Constraints on the regional emplacement of crustal resources

The reconnaissance phase of using satellite observtions to studying electromagnetic induction in the solid earth is summarized. Several points are made: (1) satellite data apparently suffer far less from the effects of near surface lateral heterogeneities in the earth than do ground-based data; (2) zonal ionospheric currents during the recovery phase of major magnetic storms appear to be minimal, at least in the dawn and dusk sectors wher MAGSAT was flown; hence the internal contributions that satellites observe during these times is in fact due primarily to induction in the Earth with little or no contribution from ionospheric currents; and (3) the interpretation of satellite data in terms of primitive electromagnetic response functions, while grossly over-simplified, results in a surprisingly well-resolved radius for an equivalent super-conductor representing the conductivity region of the Earth's interior (5,370 + or - 120 km).

Hermance, J. F.↗

NASA NTRS1984

SIRTF: the Next Step

The space infrared telescope facility (SIRTF) is a 1-meter class, long duration, super fluid helium-cooled telescope in Earth orbit, equipped with imaging and spectroscopic instrumentation operating over the wavelength range from 1.8 to 700 microns. The SIRTF will be the most powerful tool available for studying many of the compelling problems in contemporary astrophysics and for further exploration of the infrared sky demonstrated by IRAS. Adaptation of IRAS technology (cryogenics, optics, and pointing and guidance) is discussed.

Gillett, F. C.↗

NASA NTRS1985

A very important process of nucleosynthesis in stars

When some nuclei are free from strong gravitational field, they are unstable and will become stable nuclei by competitions of following processes: (1) neutron-evaporation; (2) spontaneous fission; and (3) beta prime 3-decay. At the initial stage, (1) and (2) are important and (3) can be ignored. The qualitative results are as follows: (1) it seems that nuclei with A 100 come from the spontaneous fission and beta prime decay of neutron-evaporated nuclei with A similiar to 140-440, which can replace the r-process; (2) the super-heavy elements with Z=114--126 (A similiar to 330--360) can be formed. They can be observed in cosmic rage if they have the halftime T 10 to the 7th poweer years; (3) the peak in the rare-earth elements comes from the symmetric fission of super-heavy elements; (4) there are more neutron-rich nuclei in the fragments; and (5) the abundances of a 83 elements in cosmic rays are one order of magnitude higher than that in the solar system.

Yu, C.↗

NASA NTRS2020

The Featureless Transmission Spectra of Two Super-puff Planets

The Kepler mission revealed a class of planets known as "super-puffs," with masses only a few times larger than Earth's but radii larger than Neptune, giving them very low mean densities. All three of the known planets orbiting the young solar-type star Kepler 51 are super-puffs. The Kepler 51 system thereby provides an opportunity for a comparative study of the structures and atmospheres of this mysterious class of planets, which may provide clues about their formation and evolution. We observed two transits each of Kepler 51b and 51d with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the Hubble Space Telescope. Combining new WFC3 transit times with reanalyzed Kepler data and updated stellar parameters, we confirmed that all three planets have densities lower than 0.1 g/cu.cm. We measured the WFC3 transmission spectra to be featureless between 1.15 and 1.63 μm, ruling out any variations greater than 0.6 scale heights (assuming a H/He-dominated atmosphere), thus showing no significant water absorption features. We interpreted the flat spectra as the result of a high-altitude aerosol layer (pressure <3 mbar) on each planet. Adding this new result to the collection of flat spectra that have been observed for other sub-Neptune planets, we find support for one of the two hypotheses introduced by Crossfield & Kreidberg, that planets with cooler equilibrium temperatures have more high-altitude aerosols. We strongly disfavor their other hypothesis that the H/He mass fraction drives the appearance of large-amplitude transmission features.

Jessica E. Libby-Roberts↗

NASA NTRS2010

Rocket + Science = Dialogue

It's a cliche that rocket engineers and space scientists don t see eye-to-eye. That goes double for rocket engineers working on human spaceflight and scientists working on space telescopes and planetary probes. They work fundamentally different problems but often feel that they are competing for the same pot of money. Put the two groups together for a weekend, and the results could be unscientific or perhaps combustible. Fortunately, that wasn't the case when NASA put heavy lift launch vehicle designers together with astronomers and planetary scientists for two weekend workshops in 2008. The goal was to bring the top people from both groups together to see how the mass and volume capabilities of NASA's Ares V heavy lift launch vehicle could benefit the science community. Ares V is part of NASA's Constellation Program for resuming human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, starting with missions to the Moon. In the current mission scenario, Ares V launches a lunar lander into Earth orbit. A smaller Ares I rocket launches the Orion crew vehicle with up to four astronauts. Orion docks with the lander, attached to the Ares V Earth departure stage. The stage fires its engine to send the mated spacecraft to the Moon. Standing 360 feet high and weighing 7.4 million pounds, NASA's new heavy lifter will be bigger than the 1960s-era Saturn V. It can launch almost 60 percent more payload to translunar insertion together with the Ares I and 35 percent more mass to low Earth orbit than the Saturn V. This super-sized capability is, in short, designed to send more people to more places to do more things than the six Apollo missions.

Morris,Bruce↗

NASA NTRS1988

Streaming sausage, kink and tearing instabilities in a current sheet with applications to the earth's magnetotail

This paper investigates the growth rates and eigenmode structures of the streaming sausage, kink, and tearing instabilities in a current sheet with a super-Alfvenic flow. The growth rates and eigenmode structures are first considered in the ideal incompressible limit by using a four-layer model, as well as a more realistic case in which all plasma parameters and the magnetic field vary continuously along the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field and plasma flow. An initial-value method is applied to obtain the growth rate and eigenmode profiles of the fastest growing mode, which is either the sausage mode or kink mode. It is shown that, in the earth's magnetotail, where super-Alfvenic plasma flows are observed in the plasma sheet and the ratio between the plasma and magnetic pressures far away from the current layer is about 0.1-0.3 in the lobes, the streaming sausage and streaming tearing instabilities, but not kink modes, are likely to occur.

Lee, L. C.↗

NASA NTRS2012

What Properties of CMEs are Most Important for Space Weather?

Severe space weather is characterized by intense particle radiation from the Sun and major geomagnetic storm caused by magnetized solar plasmas arriving at Earth. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are key players in both these aspects. CMEs traveling at super-Alfv nic speeds drive fast-mode MHD shocks that create the high levels of particle radiation. When a CME arrives at Earth, the CME-associated magnetic fields reconnect with Earth s magnetopause fields resulting in solar plasma entry into the magnetosphere and a geomagnetic storm depending on the magnetic structure of the CME. Particle radiation starts affecting geospace as soon as the CMEs leave the Sun and the geospace may be immersed in the radiation for several days. On the other hand, the geomagnetic storm happens only upon CME arrival at Earth. The requirements for the production of particles and magnetic storms by CMEs are different in a number of respects: solar source location, CME magnetic structure, conditions in the ambient solar wind, and shock-driving ability of CMEs. Intense shocks arriving at Earth have additional space weather effects such as sudden impulse that shrinks the magnetosphere often exposing satellites in geosynchronous orbit to the solar wind and energetic storm particle events. This paper highlights these space weather effects using CME observations space and ground based instruments during of solar cycles 23 and 24.

Gopalswamy, Nat↗

NASA NTRS1975

Is Jupiter's magnetosphere like a pulsar's or earth's

Two possible models of Jupiter's magnetosphere are compared: a pulsar-like radial-outflow model and an earth-like convection model. For the radial-outflow model, Pioneer 10 data are used to estimate the total particle and energy fluxes which must be provided by Jupiter (or its magnetosphere within the Alfven radius) to power the outflow. The convection model is considered with emphasis on field-line reconnection, convection flow time, and the location of Jupiter's magnetopause and plasmapause. The imposition of corotation on Jupiter's ionosphere, magnetosphere, and upper atmosphere is investigated in terms of an aligned rotator with either type of magnetosphere. It is concluded that: (1) Jupiter's convection flow is likely to be super-Alfvenic in its outer magnetosphere, (2) Jupiter may have earth-like magnetopauses near local dawn during substorms, (3) the angular-momentum flux that can diffuse upward through Jupiter's polar-cap atmospheres seems insufficient to impose corotation upon a radial outflow or convective return flow, and (4) neither model can be definitively accepted.

Kennel, C. F.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Solar Sources of Severe Space Weather

Severe space weather is characterized by intense particle radiation from the Sun and severe geomagnetic storm caused by magnetized solar plasma arriving at Earth. Intense particle radiation is almost always caused by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) traveling from the Sun at super-Alfvenic speeds leading to fast-mode MHD shocks and particle acceleration by the shocks. When a CME arrives at Earth, it can interact with Earth's magnetopause resulting in solar plasma entry into the magnetosphere and a geomagnetic storm depending on the magnetic structure of the CME. Particle radiation starts affecting geospace as soon as the CMEs leave the Sun and the geospace may be immersed in the radiation for several days. On the other hand, the geomagnetic storm happens only upon arrival of the CME at Earth. The requirements for the production of particles and magnetic storms by CMEs are different in a number of respects: solar source location, CME magnetic structure, conditions in the ambient solar wind, and shock-driving ability of CMEs. Occasionally, intense geomagnetic storms are caused by corotating interaction regions (CIRs) that form in the interplanetary space when the fast solar wind from coronal holes overtakes the slow wind from the quiet regions. CIRs also accelerate particles, but when they reach several AU from the Sun, so their impact on Earth's space environment is not significant. In addition to these plasma effects, solar flares that accompany CMEs also produce excess ionization in the ionosphere causing sudden ionospheric disturbances. This paper highlights these space weather effects using space weather events observed by space and ground based instruments during of solar cycles 23 and 24.

Gopalswamy, N.↗

NASA NTRS2011

The Hazards of Our Star

The Sun's magnetic field permeates its atmosphere - ranging from the solar photosphere (the visible "surface") to the corona above. Think of this field as a collection of invisible rubber bands that are slowly stretched and twisted until they eventually reach a breaking point, When the field breaks, it releases a small amount of energy, known as a nanoflare. Millions of nanoflares occur every second, and the combined effect heats the solar corona to more than 1 million kelvins, hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere. The super-heated gas emits X-ray and ultraviolet radiation; Earth's upper atmosphere absorbs it, which changes our atmosphere's properties. This can disrupt communication, navigation, and surveillance systems, and also alter the orbits of satellites. On much larger scales, huge sections of the corona explosively erupt in coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares. CMEs directed toward Earth cause geomagnetic storms, which can wreck havoc on electrical power grids and produce widespread blackouts. Highly energetic particles can damage or even disable critical spacecraft components. Intense radiation from flares has the same effects as nanoflares, but to a greater degree. The need to understand how solar phenomena impact Earth has led to an important science field called space weather.

Klimchuk, James A.↗

NASA NTRS2026

Landsat Instrument Suite (LandIS) Sensor Design for the Landsat 10 Mission

Landsat 10 will be the upcoming mission in the 50+ year Landsat series of Earth observation platforms. The centerpiece of the observatory will be a super-spectral imager known as the Landsat Instrument Suite (LandIS). The sensor will feature 26 spectral channels from the visible through near-, short-wave, and thermal infrared wavelengths with spatial resolutions of 10, 20, and 60 meters on the ground, depending on the band. These enhancements over the legacy Landsat instruments will ensure data continuity with the existing archive and will expand upon the core Landsat capabilities to enable new applications in Earth science. After a competitive procurement, NASA selected the design submitted by the Raytheon Company for the LandIS instrument. The innovative Raytheon instrument concept utilizes an advanced whiskbroom architecture to fulfill the strict radiometric, spatial, and geometric image quality requirements demanded by the Landsat 10 mission and fits within restrictive mass, volume, and power constraints. The instrument will continue the Landsat directive to image all daylit land and near-shore water areas, along with select nighttime imaging. On-board calibration source data will ensure high radiometric and geometric accuracy and stability consistent with previous missions to enable continuity in data products available to users. This paper discusses the driving requirements for LandIS and provides a description of the chosen design and operations concept of the instrument.

Requirements↗

NASA NTRS1998

Earth Science Multimedia Theater

The presentation will begin with the latest 1998 NASA Earth Science Vision for the next 25 years. A compilation of the 10 days of animations of Hurricane Georges which were supplied daily on NASA to Network television will be shown. NASA's visualizations of Hurricane Bonnie which appeared in the Sept 7 1998 issue of TIME magazine. Highlights will be shown from the NASA hurricane visualization resource video tape that has been used repeatedly this season on network TV. Results will be presented from a new paper on automatic wind measurements in Hurricane Luis from 1 -min GOES images that will appear in the October BAMS. The visualizations are produced by the Goddard Visualization & Analysis Laboratory, and Scientific Visualization Studio, as well as other Goddard and NASA groups using NASA, NOAA, ESA, and NASDA Earth science datasets. Visualizations will be shown from the "Digital-HyperRes-Panorama" Earth Science ETheater'98 recently presented in Tokyo, Paris and Phoenix. The presentation in Paris used a SGI/CRAY Onyx Infinite Reality Super Graphics Workstation at 2560 X 1024 resolution with dual synchronized video Epson 71 00 projectors on a 20ft wide screen. Earth Science Electronic Theater '999 is being prepared for a December 1 st showing at NASA HQ in Washington and January presentation at the AMS meetings in Dallas. The 1999 version of the Etheater will be triple wide with at resolution of 3840 X 1024 on a 60 ft wide screen. Visualizations will also be featured from the new Earth Today Exhibit which was opened by Vice President Gore on July 2, 1998 at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, as well as those presented for possible use at the American Museum of Natural History (NYC), Disney EPCOT, and other venues. New methods are demonstrated for visualizing, interpreting, comparing, organizing and analyzing immense Hyperimage remote sensing datasets and three dimensional numerical model results. We call the data from many new Earth sensing satellites, Hyperimage datasets, because they have such high resolution in the spectral, temporal, spatial, and dynamic range domains. The traditional numerical spreadsheet paradigm has been extended to develop a scientific visualization approach for processing Hyperimage datasets and 3D model results interactively. The advantages of extending the powerful spreadsheet style of computation to multiple sets of images and organizing image processing were demonstrated using the Distributed Image SpreadSheet (DISS).

Hasler, A. F.↗