Policing in the United States: Balancing Crime Fighting and Legal Rights

Policing in any nation is an inextricable and essential aspect of the existing government. The government of the United States is an elected democracy. It is a tripartite system including legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Essentially, the legislature creates the laws, the executive is charged with enforcing laws, and the judiciary interprets the laws. At the federal level these branches are the president, Congress, and federal courts (the highest court being the United States Supreme Court). Because the founding fathers of the U.S. (the authors and supporters of the Constitution of the United States) feared tyranny, no branch of government has unlimited power. That is, the branches of government check and balance one another. As James Madison writes in The Federalist Papers (No. 48), “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” Americans, taken as a whole, cherish these limits and the freedoms that come with them

Attitude Determination and Control Systems

The importance of accurately pointing spacecraft to our daily lives is pervasive, yet somehow escapes the notice of most people. In this section, we will summarize the processes and technologies used in designing and operating spacecraft pointing (i.e. attitude) systems

Nonlinear estimation theory and phase-lock loops.

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND AERONAUTICS.Vita.Bibliography : leaves 226-229.Ph.D

Balancing Capability and Cost on the STPSat-5 Microsat Mission

STPSat-5 is a small technology demonstration satellite developed for the DoD Space Test Program, recently launched in December 2018. The STPSat-5 space vehicle is hosting five separate space experiments in Low Earth Orbit on a single Microsatellite platform. This paper discusses the development and operation of the STPSat-5 mission with an emphasis on methods used to achieve high capability with low-cost solutions. The application of CubeSat-class hardware in a Microsatellite-class space vehicle is reviewed. Attention is given to approaches for establishing flight readiness for commercial hardware. In addition, this paper covers lessons learned in adapting heritage flight software for operation on new, lower-cost processor systems as well as suggested testing approaches. Suggestions for interfacing multiple small experiments on a single platform are addressed as well as approaches to data handling. Utilization of a large-scale commercial rideshare mission for launch is also discussed, including guidelines to facilitate space vehicle to launch vehicle integration. The topic of lean mission operations is also covered with suggestions for areas of emphasis, guidance for troubleshooting, and an update on the current operational status of the STPSat-5 mission

Sagittarius A* Small Satellite Mission: Capabilities and Commissioning Preview

SSCI is leading a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded team launching a mission in June 2021, dubbed Sagittarius A*, to demonstrate key hardware and software technologies for on-orbit autonomy, to provide a software testbed for on-orbit developmental test & autonomous mission operations, and to reduce risk for future constellation-level mission autonomy and operations. In this paper, we present the system CONOPs and capabilities, system architectures, flight and ground software development status, and initial commissioning status. The system will fly on Loft Orbital’s YAM-3 shared LEO satellite mission, and includes SSCI’s onboard autonomy software suite running on an Innoflight CFC-400 processor with onboard Automatic Target Recognition (ATR). The autonomy payload has attitude control authority over the spacecraft bus and command authority of the imaging payload, and performs fully-autonomous onboard request handling, resource & task allocation, collection execution, ATR, and detection downlinking. The system is capable of machine-to -machine tip-and-cue from offboard cueing sources via cloud-based integrations. Requests for mission data are submitted to the satellite throughout its orbit from a tactical user level via a smartphone application, and ISR data products are downlinked and displayed at the tactical level on an Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) smartphone. Follow-on software updates can be sent to the autonomy suite as over-the-air updates for on-orbit testing at any time during the on-orbit life of the satellite. Communications include GlobalStar inter-satellite communications for low rate task and status monitoring, and ground station links for payload data downloads. Planned demonstrations and opportunities will be discussed

The NYPD's Compstat: compare statistics or compose statistics?

ABSTRACT The New York City Police Department (NYPD