Fast Attitude Maneuvers for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

This paper describes a new operational capability for fast attitude maneuvering that is being developed for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The LRO hosts seven scientific instruments. For some instruments, it is necessary to per-form large off-nadir slews to collect scientific data. The accessibility of off-nadir science targets has been limited by slew rates and/or occultation, thermal and power constraints along the standard slew path. The new fast maneuver (FastMan) algorithm employs a slew path that autonomously avoids constraint violations while simultaneously minimizing the slew time. The FastMan algo-rithm will open regions of observation that were not previously feasible and improve the overall science return for LRO's extended mission. The design of an example fast maneuver for LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter that reduc-es the slew time by nearly 40% is presented. Pre-flight, ground-test, end-to-end tests are also presented to demonstrate the readiness of FastMan. This pioneer-ing work is extensible and has potential to improve the science data collection return of other NASA spacecraft, especially those observatories in extended mission phases where new applications are proposed to expand their utility

Assessment of Information to Substantiate a Health Claim on the Prevention of Prostate Cancer by Lignans

Lignans and their in vivo metabolites, especially enterolactone (ENL), have attracted substantial interest as potential chemopreventive agents for prostate cancer. Preclinical and clinical interventions performed with lignan-rich flaxseed that use surrogate biomarkers as endpoints suggest that lignans may attenuate prostate carcinogenesis in individuals with increased risk or with diagnosed cancer. No unequivocal prostate cancer risk reduction has been found for lignans in epidemiological studies, suggesting that lignan concentrations found in populations consuming a regular non-supplemented diet are not chemopreventive in prostate cancer. Presumably, the main obstacles in assessing the efficacy of food lignans is limited knowledge of the serum and tissue lignan concentrations required for the putative prevention. Further clinical studies performed with the purified compounds are required to substantiate a health claim

Enhancing the science collection capability of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

The mission of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) was to map the Moon's surface when it was launched in 2009. Since then, LRO's mission set has expanded to include providing scientific data to contribute to a better understanding of the lunar surface, its history, potential lunar habitat, as well as a more general understanding of human spaceflight for future lunar or other terrestrial missions. With seven different payload instruments onboard the LRO, daily operations of the spacecraft are requested by different scientist communities and ultimately approved and implemented through the LRO mission operations center. The mission effectiveness is limited by the target planning process and the vehicle capabilities. Currently, NASA Goddard is interested in improving the throughput of the mission. The focus of this thesis is to address this challenge and to develop an automated process for target selection as well as solve for a rapid slew to the desired targets. An automated target selection strategy is developed based on bipartite graph theory. An example is presented that demon-strates the usefulness of this approach. To ensure the plan can be executed and the science objectives satisfied, rapid slew maneuvers are developed using optimal control theory. A key challenge to the rapid slew is meeting operational constraints, which are treated as path constraints in optimal control. It is shown that the slew time for a payload instrument science target can be reduced by up to 50%.http://archive.org/details/enhancingscience1094556755Outstanding ThesisLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Fast Attitude Maneuvers for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

This paper describes a new operational capability for fast attitude maneuvering that is being developed for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The LRO hosts seven scientific instruments. For some instruments, it is necessary to perform large off-nadir slews to collect scientific data. The accessibility of off-nadir science targets has been limited by slew rates and/or occultation, thermal and power constraints along the standard slew path. The new fast maneuver (FastMan) algorithm employs a slew path that autonomously avoids constraint violations while simultaneously minimizing the slew time. The FastMan algorithm will open regions of observation that were not previously feasible and improve the overall science return for LRO’s extended mission. The design of an example fast maneuver for LRO’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter that reduces the slew time by nearly 40% is presented. Pre-flight, ground-test, end-to-end tests are also presented to demonstrate the readiness of FastMan. This pioneering work is extensible and has potential to improve the science data collection return of other NASA spacecraft, especially those observatories in extended mission phases where new applications are proposed to expand their utility