COBE nonspinning attitude propagation

The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft will exhibit complex attitude motion consisting of a spin rate of approximately -0.8 revolution per minute (rpm) about the x-axis and simultaneous precession of the spin axis at a rate of one revolution per orbit (rpo) about the nearly perpendicular spacecraft-to-Sun vector. The effect of the combined spinning and precession is to make accurate attitude propagation difficult and the 1-degree (3 sigma) solution accuracy goal problematic. To improve this situation, an intermediate reference frame is introduced, and the angular velocity divided into two parts. The nonspinning part is that which would be observed if there were no rotation about the X-axis. The spinning part is simply the X-axis component of the angular velocity. The two are propagated independently and combined whenever the complete attitude is needed. This approach is better than the usual one-step method because each of the two angular velocities look nearly constant in their respective reference frames. Since the angular velocities are almost constant, the approximations made in discrete time propagation are more nearly true. To demonstrate the advantages of this nonspinning method, attitude is propagated as outlined above and is then compared with the results of the one-step method. Over the 100-minute COBE orbit, the one-step error grows to several degrees while the nonspinning error remains negligible

Effects of thermal conduction in sonoluminescence

We show by numerical hydrodynamic calculations that there are two important effects of thermal conduction in sonoluminescence: (i) the bubble remains close to being isothermal during the expansion phase; and (ii) a cold, dense layer of air is formed at the bubble wall during the contraction phase. These conclusions are not sensitive to the particular equation of state used, although details of the dynamical evolution of the bubble are

Bubble dynamics in vibrated liquids under normal and simulated low gravity environments

Bubble dynamics in vibrated liquids under normal and simulated low gravity environment

Accuracy of the ERBS definitive attitude determination system in the presence of propagation noise

Definitive attitude solutions are supposed to be the most accurate possible. For the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), this has been accomplished by using gyro rates to transform many nonsimultaneous observations to a common time point and then averaging to reduce the effects of observation noise. Rate quality is critical to realizing improved accuracy with this method. Gyro deterioration, which shows up as large observation residuals and discontinuities between contiguous batch solutions, now discourages using the batch approach for ERBS. To address this problem, a simple Kalman filter is tried in place of the batch estimator. The filter works well as long as the attitude is completely observable. During periods without Sun coverage, however, the extrapolated yaw may diverge and then change abruptly when the Sun returns to the sensor field of view. Causes of this behavior are discussed, and some solutions are tried that address the observability aspect of the problem

Dynamic stability and parametric resonance in cylindrical propellant tanks Final report

Dynamic stability and parametric resonance of longitudinally excited liquid propellant tank mode

Probing dipole-forbidden autoionizing states by isolated attosecond pulses

We propose a general technique to retrieve the information of dipole-forbidden resonances in the autoionizing region. In the simulation, a helium atom is pumped by an isolated attosecond pulse in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) combined with a few-femtosecond laser pulse. The excited wave packet consists of the $^1S$, $^1P$, and $^1D$ states, including the background continua, near the $2s2p(^1P)$ doubly excited state. The resultant electron spectra with various laser intensities and time delays between the EUV and laser pulses are obtained by a multilevel model and an ab initio time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation calculation. By taking the ab initio calculation as a "virtual measurement", the dipole-forbidden resonances are characterized by the multilevel model. We found that in contrast to the common assumption, the nonresonant coupling between the continua plays a significant role in the time-delayed electron spectra, which shows the correlation effect between photoelectrons before they leave the core. This technique takes the advantages of ultrashort pulses uniquely and would be a timely test for the current attosecond technology.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

COBE experience with filter QUEST

A gyro based filter variation on the standard QUEST attitude determination algorithm is applied to the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). Filter QUEST is found to be three times as fast as the batch estimator and slightly more accurate than regular QUEST. Perhaps more important than its speed or accuracy is the fact that Filter QUEST can provide real time attitude solutions when regular QUEST cannot, due to lack of observability. Filter QUEST is also easy to use and adjust for the proper memory length. Suitable applications for Filter QUEST include coarse and real time attitude determination