Status of CHIPS: A NASA University Explorer Astronomy Mission

In the age of Faster, Better, Cheaper , NASA\u27s Goddard Space Flight Center has been looking for a way to implement university based world class science missions for significantly less money. The University Explorer (UNEX) program is the result. UNEX missions are designed for rapid turnaround with fixed budgets in the $10 million US dollar range. The CHIPS project was selected in 1998. The CHIPS mission has passed the Concept Study and will be having the Confirmation Review in August 2000. Many lessons have already been learned from the CHIPS UNEX project. This paper will discuss the early issues surrounding the use of commercial satellite constellations as the bus and the politics of small satellites using foreign launchers. The difficulties of finding a spacecraft in the UNEX price range will be highlighted. The advantages of utilizing Internet technologies from the earliest phases of the project through to communications with the spacecraft on orbit will be discussed. The current state of the program will be summarized and the project\u27s plans for the future will be charted

Status of CHIPS: A NASA University Explorer Astronomy Mission

In the age of Faster, Better, Cheaper , NASA\u27s Goddard Space Flight Center has been looking for a way to implement university based science missions for significantly less money. The University Explorer (UNEX) program is the result. UNEX missions are designed for rapid turnaround with fixed budgets in the $10-$15 million US dollar range. The CHIPS project was selected in 1998. The CHIPS mission passed the Design Verification Review in April 2001 and is now proceeding into implementation with a launch in mid-2002. Many lessons have already been learned from the CHIPS UNEX project. The 2000 paper discussed the early issues surrounding the use of commercial satellite constellations and the politics of small satellites using foreign launchers. The difficulties of finding a spacecraft in the UNEX price range were highlighted. The advantages of utilizing Internet technologies from the earliest phases of the project through communications with the spacecraft on orbit were discussed. The 2001 paper will discuss the implementation status of CHIPS, the first of this new class of NASA mission, and the lessons learned. The current state of the program will be summarized and the project’s plans for the future will be charted

“Dogged” Search of Fresh Nakhla Surfaces Reveals New Alteration Textures

Special Issue: 74th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, August 8-12, 2011, London, U.K.International audienceCarbonaceous chondrites are considered as amongst the most primitive Solar System samples available. One of their primitive characteristics is their enrichment in volatile elements.This includes hydrogen, which is present in hydrated and hydroxylated minerals. More precisely, the mineralogy is expected to be dominated by phyllosilicates in the case of CM chondrites, and by Montmorillonite type clays in the case of CI. Here, in order to characterize and quantify the abundance of lowtemperature minerals in carbonaceous chondrites, we performed thermogravimetric analysis of matrix fragments of Tagish Lake, Murchison and Orgueil

Relativistic Dynamics and Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals

It is now well-established that a dark, compact object (DCO), very likely a massive black hole (MBH) of around four million solar masses is lurking at the centre of the Milky Way. While a consensus is emerging about the origin and growth of supermassive black holes (with masses larger than a billion solar masses), MBHs with smaller masses, such as the one in our galactic centre, remain understudied and enigmatic. The key to understanding these holes - how some of them grow by orders of magnitude in mass - lies in understanding the dynamics of the stars in the galactic neighbourhood. Stars interact with the central MBH primarily through their gradual inspiral due to the emission of gravitational radiation. Also stars produce gases which will subsequently be accreted by the MBH through collisions and disruptions brought about by the strong central tidal field. Such processes can contribute significantly to the mass of the MBH and progress in understanding them requires theoretical work in preparation for future gravitational radiation millihertz missions and X-ray observatories. In particular, a unique probe of these regions is the gravitational radiation that is emitted by some compact stars very close to the black holes and which could be surveyed by a millihertz gravitational wave interferometer scrutinizing the range of masses fundamental to understanding the origin and growth of supermassive black holes. By extracting the information carried by the gravitational radiation, we can determine the mass and spin of the central MBH with unprecedented precision and we can determine how the holes "eat" stars that happen to be near them.Comment: Update from the first version, 151 pages, accepted for publication @ Living Reviews in Relativit

CHIPS: A NASA University Explorer Astronomy Mission

On January 12th, 2003, the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer Spacecraft (CHIPSat) launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base as a secondary payload on a Delta II booster. CHIPSat completed commissioning in February 2003, and is now a fully operational observatory. The main science objective is to measure extreme ultraviolet emissions from the interstellar medium. Data on the distribution and intensity of these emissions allow scientists to test competing theories on the formation of hot interstellar gas clouds surrounding our solar system. CHIPSat is the first satellite in NASA\u27s University-class Explorers Program (UNEX) to make it to orbit. The UNEX program was conceived by NASA as a new class of explorer mission charged with demonstrating that significant science and/or technology experiments can be performed with small satellites, constrained budgets and limited schedules. This paper presents the CHIPSat design, discusses the on-orbit performance to date, and provides lessons learned throughout the project

Publisher Correction: 78,000-year-old record of middle and later stone age innovation in an East African tropical forest

The originally published version of this Article contained an error in Fig. 3, whereby an additional unrelated graph was overlaid on top of the magnetic susceptibility plot. Furthermore, the Article title contained an error in the capitalisation of 'Stone Age'. Both of these errors have now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article