The non-sphericity of Triton's atmosphere as evidenced by stellar occultations

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-36).In an attempt to reconcile and understand recent measurements of the non-sphericity in Triton's atmosphere, the Tr148 occultation data set was reanalyzed. Recent new data from the Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidance System allowed the separation and position angle of the Tr148 double star to be independently incorporated into the occultation analysis rather than being freely fit during the occultation reduction. The separation of 0.3855 ± 0.0004 arcsec and position angle of 67.17 ± 0.05 deg determined here differ from the values determined solely from the occultation timings of 0.3874 ± 0.0011 arcsec and 65.16 ± 0.14 deg. This resulted in a change in the calculated ellipticity and position angle of Triton's half-light ellipse from their originally fitted values of 0.029 ± 0.016 and 70.3 ± 10.1 deg to improved values of 0.033 ± 0.013 and 65.1 ± 8.8 deg. By fixing the separation parameters to independently determined values instead of freely fitting for them, the confidence in the new ellipticity fit (as measure by the reduced chi-squared results) is significantly increased. This work ends with a discussion of these new values and their implications for Triton's atmosphere.by Michael James Person.S.M

The use of stellar occultations to study the figures and atmospheres of small bodies in the outer solar system

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-117).The methods of analyzing stellar occultations by small bodies in the outer solar system are discussed with examples from Triton, Pluto, and Charon. Simulations were performed characterizing the analysis of multi-chord occultations including: the effects of the direction of residual minimization in figure fits, the complications in measuring the reliability of fitted figure parameters when there are few degrees of freedom, and the proper treatment of grazing chords in model fitting. The 2005 July 11 C313.2 stellar occultation by Charon was analyzed. Occultation timings from the three published data sets were combined to accurately determine the mean radius of Charon: 606.0 ± 1.5 km. The analysis indicates that a slight oblateness in the body (0.006 ± 0.003) best matches the data, with a confidence level of 86%. Charon's mean radius corresponds to a bulk density of 1.63 0.07 g/cm3, which is significantly less than Pluto's (1.92 ± 0.12 g/cm3), consistent with an impact formation scenario in which at least one of the impactors was differentiated. The 2002 August 21 P131.1 and the 1988 June 9 P8 stellar occultations by Pluto were analyzed.(cont.) The ellipticity of Pluto's atmosphere as measured by the P131.1 event is 0.066 ± 0.040, with a Gaussian confidence level of 63%, and the ellipticity as measured by the P8 occultations is 0.091 ± 0.041, with a Gaussian confidence level of 70%. If this non-sphericity is confirmed, its size and variation could possibly be attributed to super-rotating winds driven by sources such as surface frost migration due to changing insolation patterns or albedo properties, gravity waves, and an asymmetric mass distribution in Pluto itself. The 2001 August 23 Tr231 stellar occultation by Triton was analyzed. The half-light radius of Triton's atmosphere was calculated from astrometrically calibrated model fits to the occultation light curve. The resulting half-light radius of 1479.01 km is larger than the value of 1456.3 km derived from the 1997 Trl80 occultation, with a confidence of 77% derived from the uncertainty in the astrometric calibration. If this increase were confirmed, it would indicate that the expansion of Triton's atmosphere detected between the 1989 Voyager 2 observations the 1995 and 1997 stellar occultations by Triton has continued through 2001.by Michael James Person.Ph.D

Spin vectors in the Koronis family: V. Resolving the ambiguous rotation period of (3032) Evans

A sidereal rotation counting approach is demonstrated by resolving an ambiguity in the synodic rotation period of Koronis family member (3032) Evans, whose rotation lightcurves' features did not easily distinguish between doubly- and quadruply-periodic. It confirms that Evans's spin rate does not exceed the rubble-pile spin barrier and thus presents no inconsistency with being a ~14-km reaccumulated object. The full spin vector solution for Evans is comparable to those for the known prograde low-obliquity comparably-fast rotators in the Koronis family, consistent with having been spun up by YORP thermal radiation torques.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Icaru

Relational Symbolic Execution

Symbolic execution is a classical program analysis technique used to show that programs satisfy or violate given specifications. In this work we generalize symbolic execution to support program analysis for relational specifications in the form of relational properties - these are properties about two runs of two programs on related inputs, or about two executions of a single program on related inputs. Relational properties are useful to formalize notions in security and privacy, and to reason about program optimizations. We design a relational symbolic execution engine, named RelSym which supports interactive refutation, as well as proving of relational properties for programs written in a language with arrays and for-like loops

A Flexible and Non-instrusive Approach for Computing Complex Structural Coverage Metrics

Software analysis tools and techniques often leverage structural code coverage information to reason about the dynamic behavior of software. Existing techniques instrument the code with the required structural obligations and then monitor the execution of the compiled code to report coverage. Instrumentation based approaches often incur considerable runtime overhead for complex structural coverage metrics such as Modified Condition/Decision (MC/DC). Code instrumentation, in general, has to be approached with great care to ensure it does not modify the behavior of the original code. Furthermore, instrumented code cannot be used in conjunction with other analyses that reason about the structure and semantics of the code under test. In this work, we introduce a non-intrusive preprocessing approach for computing structural coverage information. It uses a static partial evaluation of the decisions in the source code and a source-to-bytecode mapping to generate the information necessary to efficiently track structural coverage metrics during execution. Our technique is flexible; the results of the preprocessing can be used by a variety of coverage-driven software analysis tasks, including automated analyses that are not possible for instrumented code. Experimental results in the context of symbolic execution show the efficiency and flexibility of our nonintrusive approach for computing code coverage informatio

The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Objects Survey: Four years of photometry

Over 4.5 years, the Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS) assembled 228 Near-Earth Object (NEO) lightcurves. We report rotational lightcurves for 82 NEOs, constraints on amplitudes and periods for 21 NEOs, lightcurves with no detected variability within the image signal to noise and length of our observing block for 30 NEOs, and 10 tumblers. We uncovered 2 ultra-rapid rotators with periods below 20s; 2016MA with a potential rotational periodicity of 18.4s, and 2017QG$_{18}$ rotating in 11.9s, and estimate the fraction of fast/ultra-rapid rotators undetected in our project plus the percentage of NEOs with a moderate/long periodicity undetectable during our typical observing blocks. We summarize the findings of a simple model of synthetic NEOs to infer the object morphologies distribution using the measured distribution of lightcurve amplitudes. This model suggests a uniform distribution of axis ratio can reproduce the observed sample. This suggests that the quantity of spherical NEOs (e.g., Bennu) is almost equivalent to the quantity of highly elongated objects (e.g., Itokawa), a result that can be directly tested thanks to shape models from Doppler delay radar imaging analysis. Finally, we fully characterized 2 NEOs as appropriate targets for a potential robotic/human mission: 2013YS$_{2}$ and 2014FA$_{7}$ due to their moderate spin periods and low $\Delta v$.Comment: Accepted for Publication, The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Serie

Helping System Engineers Bridge the Peaks

In our experience at NASA, system engineers generally follow the Twin Peaks approach when developing safety-critical systems. However, iterations between the peaks require considerable manual, and in some cases duplicate, effort. A significant part of the manual effort stems from the fact that requirements are written in English natural language rather than a formal notation. In this work, we propose an approach that enables system engineers to leverage formal requirements and automated test generation to streamline iterations, effectively "bridging the peaks". The key to the approach is a formal language notation that a) system engineers are comfortable with, b) is supported by a family of automated V&V tools, and c) is semantically rich enough to describe the requirements of interest. We believe the combination of formalizing requirements and providing tool support to automate the iterations will lead to a more efficient Twin Peaks implementation at NASA

Material Around the Centaur (2060) Chiron from the 2018 November 28 UT Stellar Occultation

A stellar occultation of Gaia DR3 2646598228351156352 by the Centaur (2060) Chiron was observed from the South African Astronomical Observatory on 2018 November 28 UT. Here we present a positive detection of material surrounding Chiron from the 74-in telescope for this event. Additionally, a global atmosphere is ruled out at the tens of mircobar level for several possible atmospheric compositions. There are multiple 3-sigma drops in the 74-in light curve: three during immersion and two during emersion. Occulting material is located between 242-270 km from the center of the nucleus in the sky plane. Assuming the ring-plane orientation proposed for Chiron from the 2011 occultation, the flux drops are located at 352, 344, and 316 km (immersion), and 357, and 364 km (emersion) from the center, with normal optical depths of 0.26, 0.36, and 0.22 (immersion) and 0.26 and 0.18 (emersion), and equivalent widths between 0.7-1.3 km. This detection is similar to the previously proposed two-ring system and is located within the error bars of that ring-pole plane; however, the normal optical depths are less than half of the previous values, and three features are detected on immersion. These results suggest that the properties of the surrounding material have evolved between the 2011, 2018, and 2022 observations.Comment: Accepted by the Planetary Science Journal 21 Oct. 2023; 13 pages, 9 figures, 4 table

cGMP Recombinant FIX for IV and Oral Hemophilia B Therapy

Three specific aims are proposed: Specific Aim # 1. Process engineer and scale-up the recovery and purification of transgenic recombinant human Factor IX. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Biological Process Development Facility will complete process development and scale-up, and produce clinical grade materials for preclinical studies. The endpoint is a proposed final product specification to help facilitate transfer to current Good Manufacturing Practices compliant production of clinical grade material to support an Investigational New Drug filing with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) leading to clinical trials. Specific Aim #2. Characterize and formulate transgenic recombinant human Factor IX for intravenous dosage, and evaluate in a hemophilia B dog model. These activities are directed toward characterization of the product important to assure the provision of safe and reproducibly effective hemostasis. The results of these investigations will help support an IND filing with the FDA. Specific Aim # 3. Develop an oral dosage form of transgenic recombinant human Factor IX, and evaluate in hemophilia B mice and dog models. Oral administration of coagulation therapy will obviate the invasiveness, discomfort, potential for opportunistic infection, and complications of storage and supplies that accompany intravenous administration. Oral dosage forms of Factor IX will thus greatly increase the proportion of the patient population that can be treated. There is also published evidence suggesting that oral administration may reduce the potential for complicating immune responses to replacement therapy, especially in patients with severe hemophilia