The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union

Perminov was the leading designer for Mars and Venus spacecraft at the Soviet Lavochkin design bureau in the early days of Martian exploration. In addition to competing with the U.S. to get to the Moon, the Soviets also struggled to beat the U.S. to Mars during the Cold War. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets attempted to send a number of robotic probes to Mars, but for a variety of reasons, most of these missions ended in failure. Despite these overall failures, the Soviets garnered a great deal of scientific and technical knowledge through these efforts. This monograph tells some fascinating, but little-known, stories

Estimation of the influence of wood-fire retardants on fire behavior of some types of wood construction materials

In this paper the effect of fire front on the surface of wood samples (pine, aspen and larch) was presented to estimate the effect of different wood-fire retardants. Infrared thermography was used as a diagnostic method. Modern methods of IR-diagnostics and the use of thermal imagers eliminate the need for a large number of thermocouples, which perturb the investigated medium during measurements. At the same time, a much better resolution in space and time can be obtained using infrared diagnostics. The surface temperature distribution was obtained for the test wood samples after exposure to a fire front that was modeled using pine needles. The ignition probability was estimated for the chosen experimental parameters for each kind of wood. In the infrared region the sample surface characteristics were recorded using a thermal imager JADE J530SB with a 2.5–2.7 micron optical filter that allowed a temperature to be measured in the range of 500–850 K. In order to record a temperature in the range of 293–550 K, the recording was conducted without a filter. The fire hazard characteristics of wood after fire retardant treatment showed a significant reduction in the surface temperature and the resistance to fire for the chosen parameters of the experiment compared to the same untreated sample

Mathematical Simulation of Contaminant Flow in Closed Reservoir

A mathematical model of the propagation in flooded mine lightweight contaminant due to allocation of groundwater is considered. Mathematical model was based on an analysis of experimental data and using concept and methods from reactive media mechanics. The boundary-value problem is solved numerically using the finite volume method. The distribution of fields of velocities and concentration of impurity particles in a flooded mine have been obtained at different times. These results can be used to analyze mining water treatment process due to environment and evaluate its further possible improvements

Ion-exchange processes under the influense of magnetic field

In this paper, the research results of the influence of magnetic field on the ion-exchange processes are reported. For the first time, it is experimentally demonstrated that magnetic field increases the electrodialysis current

Applications of resultants in the spectral m-root framework

The Z-eigenvalues, E-eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors for the Berwald-Moor associated multilinear form in the case m = n = 3, are computed by means of applying the method of resultants. The complexity of the algorithm and further developments are discussed. © Balkan Society of Geometers, Geometry Balkan Press 2010