Pioneering Spirit in Space Exploration

,.o have a career in science is to live in an environment of great beauty and challenge and the excitement of it never fades", says Professor Susan McKenna-Lawlor, winner of the Irish Laureate - Woman of Europe Award in 1994 - for her pioneering work in space exploration. Dermot O'Leary, Chairman of CIE, sponsors of the Award, said that, ''the Laureate Award is designed to pay tribute to those women throughout Europe who have advanced the European ideal by their personal careers and have contributed, through their achievements to the development of a new Europe

Biological Contamination Prevention for Outer Solar System Moons of Astrobiological Interest: What Do We Need to Know?

To ensure that scientific investments in space exploration are not compromised by terrestrial contamination of celestial bodies, special care needs to be taken to preserve planetary conditions for future astrobiological exploration. Significant effort has been made and is being taken to address planetary protection in the context of inner Solar System exploration. In particular for missions to Mars, detailed internationally accepted guidelines have been established. For missions to the icy moons in the outer Solar System, Europa and Enceladus, the planetary protection requirements are so far based on a probabilistic approach and a conservative estimate of poorly known parameters. One objective of the European Commission-funded project, Planetary Protection of Outer Solar System, was to assess the existing planetary protection approach, to identify inherent knowledge gaps, and to recommend scientific investigations necessary to update the requirements for missions to the icy moons

BepiColombo Science Investigations During Cruise and Flybys at the Earth, Venus and Mercury

The dual spacecraft mission BepiColombo is the first joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to explore the planet Mercury. BepiColombo was launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on October 20th, 2018, in its packed configuration including two spacecraft, a transfer module, and a sunshield. BepiColombo cruise trajectory is a long journey into the inner heliosphere, and it includes one flyby of the Earth (in April 2020), two of Venus (in October 2020 and August 2021), and six of Mercury (starting from 2021), before orbit insertion in December 2025. A big part of the mission instruments will be fully operational during the mission cruise phase, allowing unprecedented investigation of the different environments that will encounter during the 7-years long cruise. The present paper reviews all the planetary flybys and some interesting cruise configurations. Additional scientific research that will emerge in the coming years is also discussed, including the instruments that can contribute

Characteristics of Adults in the Hepatitis B Research Network in North America Reflect Their Country of Origin and Hepatitis B Virus Genotype

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide; populations that migrate to the US and Canada might be disproportionately affected. The Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN) is a cooperative network of investigators from the United States and Canada, created to facilitate clinical, therapeutic, and translational research in adults and children with hepatitis B. We describe the structure of the network and baseline characteristics of adults with hepatitis B enrolled in the network

Pioneering Spirit in Space Exploration

,.o have a career in science is to live in an environment of great beauty and challenge and the excitement of it never fades", says Professor Susan McKenna-Lawlor, winner of the Irish Laureate - Woman of Europe Award in 1994 - for her pioneering work in space exploration. Dermot O'Leary, Chairman of CIE, sponsors of the Award, said that, ''the Laureate Award is designed to pay tribute to those women throughout Europe who have advanced the European ideal by their personal careers and have contributed, through their achievements to the development of a new Europe

Performance of the Mission critical Electrical Support System (ESS) which handled communications and data Transfer between the Rosetta Orbiter and ist Lander Philae while en route to and at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

The Electrical Support System (ESS), which was designed and built in Ireland, handled commands transmitted from the Rosetta spacecraft to the Command and Data Management System (CDMS) aboard its Lander Philae during a ten year Cruise Phase to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as well as at the comet itself. The busy Cruise Phase included three Earth flybys, a flyby of Mars and visits to two asteroids, Steins and Lutetia. Data originating at the individual Lander experiments measured while en-route to and at the comet were also handled by the ESS which received and reformatted them prior to their transmission by Rosetta to Earth. Since the success of the Lander depended on the acquisition of scientific data, the ESS was defined by the European Space Agency to be Mission Critical Hardware. The electronic design of the ESS and its method of handling communications between the spacecraft and Philae are herein presented. The nominal performance of the ESS during the Cruise Phase and in the course of subsequent surface campaigns is described and the successful fulfilment of the brief of this subsystem to retrieve unique scientific data measured by the instruments of the Philae Lander demonstrated

Overview of energetic particle hazards during prospective manned missions to Mars

A scenario for an initial manned mission to Mars involves transits through the Van Allen Radiation Belts, a 30 day ‘short surface stay’ and a 400 day Cruise Phase (to/from the planet). The contribution to the total dose incurred through transiting the belts is relatively small and manageable. Estimates of the particle radiation hazard incurred during a 30 day stay on the surface (using ESA's Mars Energetic Radiation Environment Models dMEREM and e MEREM) indicate that the dose is not expected to be particularly challenging health-wise due to the shielding effect provided by the Martian atmosphere and the body of the planet. This is in accord with estimations obtained using the Langley HZETRN code. Estimates of GCR exposure in free space during the minimum phase of Solar Cycle 23 determined using the CREME2009 model are in reasonable agreement with published results obtained using HZETRN (which they exceed by about 10%). The Cruise Phase poses a significant radiation problem due to the cumulative effects of isotropic Galactic Cosmic Radiation over 400 days. The occurrence during this period of a large Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) event, especially if it has a hard energy spectrum, could be catastrophic health wise to the crew. Such particle events are rare but they are not currently predictable. An overview of mitigating strategies currently under development to meet the radiation challenge is provided and it is shown that the health problem posed by energetic particle radiation is presently unresolved

PPOSS - PLANETARY PROTECTION OF OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM EC H2020 PROJECT

The PPOSS (Planetary Protection of Outer Solar System bodies) project, coordinated by the European Science Foundation was selected by the European Commission in August 2015 following the Horizon 2020 call `Space-Competitiveness of the European Space Sector-2015'. In addition to the European Science Foundation, DLR, COSPAR, Imperial College London, EUROSPACE, INAF and Space Technology Ireland Ltd. are also part of the project consortium and PPOSS also has several international partners and observers. PPOSS will run for three years (2016-2018) and has for main objectives to provide an interna- tional forum to consider and approach the specificity of Planetary Protection (biological and organic contamination) for outer Solar system bodies, including icy worlds and small bodies, in the general context of Planetary Protection regulation. While significant effort has been, and is being provided to address planetary protection in the context of the exploration of inner Solar System bodies, and in particular Mars, PPOSS would allow to tackle the scientific, technological and policy-making specificity of Planetary Protection of outer solar system bodies. Project findings will be considered in the general context of the international planetary protection landscape and presented to COSPAR PPP..

Model of 2D optical correlator for fingerprint identification

This paper is devoted to the fingerprint identification problems and the experimental models of relevant optical setups. As published last year, some possibility of a fingerprint identification by means of 1D cut correlation has appeared. The first section of this paper deals with an improvement of our previous method based upon a 1D cut correlation. Originally a fingerprint photographic film record was used. Recently a fingerprint was displayed on a 2D hi-res LCD panel, SHARP. The second section of this paper is devoted to a comparative experimental verification of widely used JTC as a reference 2D correlation method. Finally, a set of experimental data for both techniques is presented