Emplacement of the Rocche Rosse rhyolite lava flow (Lipari, Aeolian Islands)

The authors acknowledge Airbus Defence and Space for providing satellite imagery, financial support from Keele University and fieldwork grants from the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group. LAB wishes to thank Leanne Patrick and James Watling for fieldwork assistance. The authors are grateful for the thorough and constructive comments from Guido Giordano and an anonymous reviewer, as well as the careful editorial handling of Kathy Cashman and Andrew Harris, which greatly improved this manuscript. Open access via Springer CompactPeer reviewedPublisher PD

E-Learning: Case Airbus Defence and Space Oy

Airbus Defence and Space Oy aims to have security practice training for all company employees and subcontractors who work in the company premises. Previously the use of classroom learning did not reach the goals set for security practices on account of short term employees. These challenges have been thought to be addressed by converting the classroom events into an online E-learning form. The aim of the thesis is effectiveness, seeing a clear increase in attendance figures and find a solution to train a new employee as early as possible to the safety culture of the company. Effectiveness is addressed by having the employee as interactive with the material as possible. Questions which restrict forward navigation are included in the learning material so the learner will have to think about the answers and read carefully. In addition to the software settings, surveys and comparisons are used to map a strategy to achieve these goals. The software which is to be used is ILIAS E-learning software which is considered in a SWOT analysis of the thesis. E-learning has a lot of potential for various kinds of learning which is why an analysis of different learning types and how to address them is done using the VARK model. Data is received through the ILIAS software and employees answer two different surveys, one on the old method in the auditorium and one on the new E-learning method. Comparisons on interest and effectiveness are made and feedback has been received. The thesis is completed within the guidelines set in the beginning; these guidelines made it possible to reach the set goals

Orion European Service Module (ESM) Development, Integration and Qualification Status

ESA and the European Industry are supplying the European Service Module for Orion. An overview of the system and subsystem configuration of the Orion European Service Module (ESM) as designed and built for the EM-1 mission is provided as well as an outline of its development, assembly, integration and verification process performed by ESA and NASA in coordination with their respective Industrial prime contractors, Airbus Defence and Space and Lockheed Martin

A strategy to characterize the LISA-Pathfinder cold gas thruster system

The cold gas micro-propulsion system that will be used during the LISA-Pathfinder mission will be one of the most important component used to ensure the "free-fall" of the enclosed test masses. In this paper we present a possible strategy to characterize the effective direction and amplitude gain of each of the 6 thrusters of this system

Disentangling the magnetic force noise contribution in LISA pathfinder

Magnetically-induced forces on the inertial masses on-board LISA Pathfinder are expected to be one of the dominant contributions to the mission noise budget, accounting for up to 40%. The origin of this disturbance is the coupling of the residual magnetization and susceptibility of the test masses with the environmental magnetic field. In order to fully understand this important part of the noise model, a set of coils and magnetometers are integrated as a part of the diagnostics subsystem. During operations a sequence of magnetic excitations will be applied to precisely determine the coupling of the magnetic environment to the test mass displacement using the on-board magnetometers. Since no direct measurement of the magnetic field in the test mass position will be available, an extrapolation of the magnetic measurements to the test mass position will be carried out as a part of the data analysis activities. In this paper we show the first results on the magnetic experiments during an end- to-end LISA Pathfinder simulation, and we describe the methods under development to map the magnetic field on-board

Accuracy comparison of Pléiades satellite ortho-images using GPS device based GCPs against TerraSAR-X-based GCPs

Conducting single frame orthorectification on satellite images to create an ortho-image requires four basic components, namely an image, a geometric sensor model, elevation data (for example a digital elevation model (DEM)) and ground control points (GCPs). For this study, orthorectification entailed the use of a single scene Pléiades primary panchromatic image, applying the Pléiades rigorous geometric model, utilising a high-quality 2 m DEM and using GCPs that were acquired from two different collection methods. The application of these different GCPs to the execution of orthorectification encompassed the aim of this paper, which was to investigate and compare the positional accuracies of ortho-images under two scenarios. Firstly, GCPs were manually collected through fieldwork utilising a Trimble GeoExplorer 6000 series handheld GPS device and secondly, by utilising TerraSAR-X based GCPs that were acquired from Airbus Defence and Space. The objective of this study was to determine the geolocation accuracy of a high-resolution satellite ortho-image when different types of ground control are used. This required the execution of two orthorectification tests where only the type of GCPs differed. The results of these tests were interesting since it highlighted the difference in positional accuracy when utilising various sources of ground control to perform orthorectification on satellite imagery. The comparison results showed that utilising the manual GCPs produced a better positional accurate ortho-image as opposed to using the TerraSAR-X based GCPs. Nonetheless, the TerraSAR-X based GCPs still produced a sub 2 m accurate ortho-image, which is more than sufficient for the production of most geospatial products.Keywords: orthorectification, digital elevation model (DEM), ground control point (GCP), high-resolution satellite imagery, TerraSAR-X based GCPs, WorldDEM™, Airbus Defence and Spac

In-flight thermal experiments for LISA pathfinder: simulating temperature noise at the inertial sensors

Thermal Diagnostics experiments to be carried out on board LISA Pathfinder (LPF) will yield a detailed characterisation of how temperature fluctuations affect the LTP (LISA Technology Package) instrument performance, a crucial information for future space based gravitational wave detectors as the proposed eLISA. Amongst them, the study of temperature gradient fluctuations around the test masses of the Inertial Sensors will provide as well information regarding the contribution of the Brownian noise, which is expected to limit the LTP sensitivity at frequencies close to 1 mHz during some LTP experiments. In this paper we report on how these kind of Thermal Diagnostics experiments were simulated in the last LPF Simulation Campaign (November, 2013) involving all the LPF Data Analysis team and using an end-to-end simulator of the whole spacecraft. Such simulation campaign was conducted under the framework of the preparation for LPF operations

Probabilistic μ-analysis for system performances assessment

Hinfinity/μ methods are commonly used in Airbus Defence and Space for the design and validation of control solutions. Formulated in a worst-case paradigm, these methods necessarily lead to overly conservative solutions since sized on the extreme cases. However, the acceptance for relaxed control performances requires mastering the risk associated to the detected unlikely events calling for probabilistic performances metrics in the validation process. A probabilistic μ-analysis method is presented in this paper to exhaustively explore the uncertain parametric domain while evaluating the cumulative probability density function of the performance index. Recent μ-analysis tools implemented in the ONERA’s SMAC toolbox are coupled with a dichotomic search algorithm in order to delimit the safe parametric domain while incrementing the probability of success of criteria. The proposed algorithm is applied to a didactic second order system to demonstrate the performances of the method

A noise simulator for eLISA: migrating LISA pathfinder knowledge to the eLISA mission

We present a new technical simulator for the eLISA mission, based on state space modeling techniques and developed in MATLAB. This simulator computes the coordinate and velocity over time of each body involved in the constellation, i.e. the spacecraft and its test masses, taking into account the different disturbances and actuations. This allows studying the contribution of instrumental noises and system imperfections on the residual acceleration applied on the TMs, the latter reflecting the performance of the achieved free-fall along the sensitive axis. A preliminary version of the results is presented