Cutting edge customer driven research in two areas:

Aerosciences, including the completion and delivery of two new aerothermal CFD codes, a first ever validated shock layer radiation model, and an experimental validationdatabase, at flight-relevant enthalpy, for current and future generations.

EDL Materials, including the development and delivery of two new flexible TPS systems to enable HIAD missions, vastly improved ablator modeling capability, and improved polymer resins to enhance or enable future developments in woven, flexible and conformal thermal protection systems.

ERBE_S10N_WFOV_NF_Edition3 is the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-10N (Nonscanner-only) Wide Field of View (WFOV) Numerical Filter (NF) Radiant Flux and Albedo Edition 3 in Native Format data product. Data collection for this product is complete. This data product contains temporally and spatially averaged shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) fluxes derived from one month of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment non-scanning wide field-of-view instruments aboard the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS). Instantaneous TOA fluxes were spatially averaged on 5° and 10° equal-angle grids using numerical filter and shape factor techniques, respectively. ERBE scanner-independent temporal interpolation algorithms were applied to produce daily, monthly-hourly, and monthly mean fluxes from the instantaneous gridded data. The S10N_WFOV files contain both temporally averaged and instantaneous gridded mean values of TOA total-sky LW flux, total-sky SW flux, and total-sky albedo for each 5° and 10° region observed during the month. The main difference between Edition3 and Edition2 releases is in the treatment of TOA radiative fluxes resulting from changes in the ERBE non-scanner processing algorithm to account for decay in satellite altitude over the data period.

ERBE_S10N_WFOV_NF_Edition2 is the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-10N (Nonscanner-only) Wide Field of View (WFOV) Numerical Filter (NF) Radiant Flux and Albedo Edition 2 in Native Format data product. Data collection for this product is complete. The reprocessed ERBE S10N_WFOV ERBS Edition2 data product contains temporally and spatially averaged shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) fluxes derived from one month of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment non-scanning wide field-of-view instruments aboard the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite. Instantaneous TOA fluxes from the ERBE/ERBS S7 product were spatially averaged on a 5° and 10° equal-angle grid using numerical filter and shape factor techniques, respectively. ERBE scanner-independent temporal interpolation algorithms were applied to produce daily, monthly-hourly, and monthly mean fluxes from the instantaneous gridded data. The S10N_WFOV files contain both temporally averaged and instantaneous gridded mean values of TOA total-sky LW flux, total-sky SW flux, and total-sky albedo for each 5° and 10° region observed during the month. The major differences between Edition2 and the original release are in the monthly mean fluxes with (1) the incorporation of stochastic quality assurance algorithms for filtering out monthly-mean data with excessive temporal sample errors and (2) a self-consistent usage of the WFOV data in selecting scene-dependent directional models for temporal interpolation of the ERBE WFOV instantaneous gridded data.

ERBE_S10N_WFV_SF_NAT_1 is the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-10N (Non-scanner-only) Wide Field of View (WFOV) Shape Factor (SF) Earth Flux and Albedo data product. Data collection for this product is complete. It is available in the Native (NAT) Format. ERBE was a multi-satellite system designed to measure the Earth's radiation budget. The ERBE instruments flew on a mid-inclination National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) and two sun-synchronous National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites (NOAA-9 and NOAA-10). Each satellite carried both a scanner and a non-scanner instrument package. The non-scanner instrument package contained four Earth-viewing channels and a solar monitor. The Earth-viewing channels had two spatial resolutions: a horizon-to-horizon view of the Earth, and a field-of-view limited to about 1000 km in diameter. The former was called WFOV and the latter the medium field-of-view (MFOV) channels. The solar monitor was a direct descendant of the Solar Maximum Mission's Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor detector. Due to the concern for spectral flatness and high accuracy, all five of the channels were active cavity radiometers. The MFOV (medium-field-of-view) SF (shape factor) S-10 contained inverted daily, monthly hourly, and monthly averages of shortwave and long-wave radiant fluxes at the top-of-the-atmosphere for one month. This data set was produced for each of the satellites (ERBS and NOAA-9) and the combination of satellites, which were operational during the data month. The values for this data set were derived using the shape factor technique (Smith et al. 1986). As described in the Earth Radiant Fluxes and Albedo, Scanner S-9, Non-scanner S-10/S-10N User's Guide, the data contains a 30 byte header, 67 scale factors which were used to scale the data in the first record, and 26 scale factors which were used to scale the data in the second record. The data set also contained two records for each processed region. The first record was of fixed length (990 words) and contained averaged data. The second record was of variable length and contained individual hour box estimates. The length of the second record, in words, was calculated by multiplying the number of hour boxes (978th word of record one) by the number of values stored for each hour box (38 for the non-scanner).

ERBE_S10_MFOV_SF_NAT_1 is the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-10 Medium Field of View (MFOV) Shape Factor (SF) Radiant Flux and Albedo data product. Data collection for this product is complete. It is available in the Native (NAT) Format. ERBE was a multi-satellite system designed to measure the Earth's radiation budget. The ERBE instruments flew on a mid-inclination National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) and two sun-synchronous National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites (NOAA-9 and NOAA-10). Each satellite carried both a scanner and a non-scanner instrument package. The non-scanner instrument package contained four Earth-viewing channels and a solar monitor. The Earth-viewing channels had two spatial resolutions: a horizon-to-horizon view of the Earth, and a field-of-view limited to about 1000 km in diameter. The former was called the wide field-of-view (WFOV) and the latter MFOV channels. The solar monitor was a direct descendant of the Solar Maximum Mission's Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor detector. Due to the concern for spectral flatness and high accuracy, all five of the channels were active cavity radiometers. The MFOV (medium-field-of-view) SF (shape factor) S-10 contained inverted daily, monthly hourly, and monthly averages of shortwave and long-wave radiant fluxes at the top-of-the-atmosphere for one month. This data set was produced for each of the satellites (ERBS and NOAA-9) and the combination of satellites, which were operational during the data month. The values for this data set were derived using the shape factor technique (Smith et al. 1986). As described in the Earth Radiant Fluxes and Albedo, Scanner S-9, Non-scanner S-10/S-10N User's Guide, the data contains a 30 byte header, 67 scale factors which were used to scale the data in the first record, and 26 scale factors which were used to scale the data in the second record. The data set also contained two records for each processed region. The first record was of fixed length (990 words) and contained averaged data. The second record was of variable length and contained individual hour box estimates. The length of the second record, in words, was calculated by multiplying the number of hour boxes (978th word of record one) by the number of values stored for each hour box (38 for the non-scanner).

The objective of the proposed research is to develop and test a prototype of an innovative and simple detector technique to identify moderate energy (a few MeV) positrons in space. Positron measurements at such energies have never been made in space. Measurement of the Galactic cosmic ray (GCR) positron fraction at low energies will provide new information about the transport and modulation of particles in the Local Interstellar Medium (LISM) and the Heliosphere. Also, positrons are unique among observable stable high energy particles since they are formed only as secondaries from high energy charged particle interactions in the Solar atmosphere during Solar particle events (SPEs). Positron measurements of this type will open a new channel for the study of Solar particle events which could address issues such as the determination of plasma and magnetic field parameters during high energy particle acceleration at the Sun, time evolution of Solar flare processes, and magnetic connectivity between acceleration sites and the interplanetary medium.

Our detector scheme, the Positron Identification by Coincident Annihilation Photons (PICAP) technique, is based upon simple, reliable, well-proven and robust detectors. PICAP was inspired by the participation of the P.I. in a measurement of the β+ half-life of 54Mn (for cosmic-ray chronometry) at Argonne National Laboratory using a similar technique [Wuosmaa et al. 1998]. The proposed project will develop and build a prototype PICAP instrument and expose it to negatrons and positrons at Jefferson Laboratory to demonstrate detection efficiencies and—equally important—PICAP's efficiency in discriminating against negatrons as false positrons. The prototype will also be exposed to protons at Indiana University Cyclotron Facility to demonstrate PICAP's efficiency in rejecting protons as false electrons. The goal is a proven detector system that, in a stand-alone instrument or, more likely, as part of a charged particle instrument/suite, can measure the energetic particle population at moderate energies (1-100's of MeV/nucleon), and can simultaneously measure the electron flux and positron fraction at previously unexplored energies. An instrument incorporating PICAP would be particularly attractive as to cost, mass, power and telemetry requirements, making it well suited to a variety of space missions in contrast to more complex and massive magnetic spectrometer techniques.

The new addition to previous charged particle instrument designs is the additional capability to precisely measure the positron fraction. We propose to build a PICAP prototype, proving the positron detection capability, and optimized for the identification of 5-10 MeV positrons. A PICAP instrument may easily be tailored to measure other energies, depending upon specific science goals. A PICAP capability could be easily incorporated into a standard charged particle instrument designed to measure all moderate energy charged particles in space.  

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The methodology developed under this grant is primarily an effort to develop new sub-payload technologies and an inexpensive method of testing them. The three technical goals are: (1) to improve and test the existing spring sub-payload ejection system and rocket propelled ejection system, (2) to test the performance of ampule-deployed radar chaff (rather than TMA) to track high altitude winds, and (3) to develop and test sensor and telemetry packages to monitor the attitude stability and position of deployed sub-payloads.  The proposed effort will also demonstrate very low cost, low altitude rockets as an inexpensive flight test of payloads prior to expensive sounding rocket deployments. The payloads tested on 5 to 7 low-cost rockets will be (1) foil chaff designed for radar tracking of mesospheric winds, (2) plasma instruments composed of GPS monitors, magnetometers, and accelerometers, and (3) android phones for the investigation of off-the-shell instrumentation and telemetry.  Finally, a campaign of 2 to 4 sounding rocket deployments on ‘as-available’ flights from Poker Flats will be used to test spring ejection without spin up, spring ejection with spin up for sub-payload attitude control, and rocket ejection