E-sail test payload of ESTCube-1 nanosatellite

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Jouni Envall, Pekka Janhunen, Petri Toivanen, Mihkel Pajusalu, Erik Ilbis, Jaanus Kalde, Matis Averin, Henri Kuuste, Kaspars Laizans, Viljo Allik, Timo Rauhala, Henri Seppnen, Sergiy Kiprich, Jukka Ukkonen, Edward Haeggstrm, Taneli Kalvas, Olli Tarvainen, Janne Kauppinen, Antti Nuottajrvi, Hannu Koivisto

(Submitted on 28 Apr 2014)

The scientific mission of ESTCube-1, launched in May 2013, is to measure the Electric solar wind sail (E-sail) force in orbit. The experiment is planned to push forward the development of E-sail, a propulsion method recently invented at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. E-sail is based on extracting momentum from the solar wind plasma flow by using long thin electrically charged tethers. ESTCube-1 is equipped with one such tether, together with hardware capable of deploying and charging it. At the orbital altitude of ESTCube-1 (660--680~km) there is no solar wind present. Instead, ESTCube-1 shall observe the interaction between the charged tether and the ionospheric plasma. The ESTCube-1 payload uses a 10-meter, partly two-filament E-sail tether and a motorized reel on which it is stored. The tether shall be deployed from a spinning satellite with the help of centrifugal force. An additional mass is added at the tip of the tether to assist with the deployment. During E-sail experiment the tether shall be charged to 500~V potential. Both positive and negative voltages shall be experimented with. The voltage is provided by a dedicated high voltage source and delivered to the tether through a slip ring contact. When the negative voltage is applied to the tether, the satellite body is expected to attract electron flow capable of compensating for the ion flow, which runs to the tether from the surrounding plasma. With the positive voltage applied, onboard cold cathode electron guns are used to remove excess electrons to maintain the positive voltage of the tether. In this paper we present the design and structure of the tether payload of ESTCube-1.

Comments:

24 pages, 16 figures, submitted to the ESTCube-1 special issue of Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences

Subjects:

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det)

Cite as:

arXiv:1404.6961 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:1404.6961v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)

Submission history

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E-sail test payload of ESTCube-1 nanosatellite

AI in Carmageddon – More Intuition – Artificial Intelligence in Video Games – Video

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AI in Carmageddon - More Intuition - Artificial Intelligence in Video Games
Fellow gamers on the Carmageddon forum were skeptical about my claims that the artificial intelligence in Carmageddon could predict in advance when the player was about to waste an opponent,...

By: AmazingArends

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3 Aerospace and Defense ETFs to Buy on Solid Industry Oulook – ETF News And Commentary

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Though Q1 earnings season has seen a comparatively weak start, the aerospace and defense space has come out with a series of estimate beating results.

The world's largest aerospace and defense manufacturers Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop have all cheered the market by reporting higher-than-expected profits and raising their full year forecasts. Cost cutting strategies and operational efficiency enabled these biggies to keep their bottom-line growing (read: Top Ranked Defense Stocks and ETFs Ready to Explode Higher ).

Premier defense operators are expanding their operations through acquisitions and foreign orders to combat defense budget cuts in the U.S. These companies are also restructuring their businesses and keeping themselves abreast of technology to counter fresh competition.

Below we have highlighted in greater details the earnings of some of the aerospace and defense companies.

Earnings in Focus

Aerospace giant, The Boeing Comapny ( BA ) reported adjusted first quarter 2014 earnings of $1.76 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 15.4%. Revenues from the company's Commercial Airplane Segment surged 19% to $12.7 billion on higher delivery volume. Strong top-line growth and increased deliveries of its flagship commercial airframes, the 737, 777 and the 787, were the primary contributors for the strong results.

Also, Northrop Grumman Corp ( NOC ), which makes unmanned planes, the B-2 bomber and electronic equipment, also reported higher-than-expected earnings and revenues. While the company's adjusted earnings of $2.40 per share surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.15 by 11.6%, revenues beat our forecast of $5,809 million by 0.7%.

However, the company reported a 4.2% year-over-year drop in its quarterly revenues. Lower volume from unmanned and space programs as well as from combat avionics and navigation and maritime systems programs were some of the reasons behind the sales decline (see Aerospace and Defense ETF Investing 101 ).

Pentagon's prime contractor, Lockheed ( LMT ) also came up with bright results amid the uncertain budget environment. Though the company missed our revenue estimate of $10,834 million by a small 1.7% margin, it reported quarterly earnings of $2.87 per share, beating our estimates by a margin of roughly 14%. Moreover, the company reported a 27.6% jump in earnings from the year-ago quarter.

Also, United Technologies Corp. ( UTX ) reported better-than-expected results beating our estimates on both earnings and revenues. Though the company's profits fell 5% year over year, an improved 2014 guidance helped cheer investors. Sales in 2014 are expected to be $64 billion. The company increased the low end of its earnings guidance from $6.55-$6.85 per share to $6.65 to $6.85 per share.

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3 Aerospace and Defense ETFs to Buy on Solid Industry Oulook - ETF News And Commentary

Book World: Michael Cunninghams heavenly style rules in The Snow Queen

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Cunninghams premise is almost as old as God, who once confronted Moses in the form of a burning bush. But nowadays such annunciations tap on the door of a culture deeply skeptical of divine theatrics. Signs and wonders are simply misinterpreted natural phenomena or symptoms of psychological illness, arent they? Novelists Alan Lightman and Joshua Max Feldman, among others, have explored the way intimations of spirituality can disrupt the equilibrium of our rational world, but such considerations are rare. As Carlene Bauer writes in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, The literary novel, current American edition, does not seem to be where we go to work out our relation to the numinous.

The Snow Queen takes its title from one of Hans Christian Andersens fairy tales, which might suggest Cunninghams regard for the substance of things not seen. And yet a spirit of agnosticism or at least pitiful tolerance allows the mystery of what Barrett saw to float over this story. Like any intelligent 21st-century man, Barrett knows all about satellites and cortical migraines and the aurora borealis, but he also knows what he felt in Central Park: As surely as he was looking up at the light, the light was looking back down at him. No. Not looking. Apprehending. . . . He felt the lights attention.

Cunningham has created a small group of sophisticated New Yorkers thirsty for a miracle. Barretts latest humiliating breakup arrives as hes climbing down the ladder of success. Though allegedly brilliant, he has been reduced to selling clothing and living with his brother, Tyler, in a burned-out neighborhood where even the criminals have lost their ambition. Tyler, meanwhile, is a musician a bartender, really whos determined to give up cocaine after just one more hit. Hes rushing to write the perfect wedding song for his fiancee, Beth, whos dying of cancer. More depressing: George W. Bush is about to be reelected.

Whos to say that God wouldnt give this sad little family a hint of benediction? After all, revelation is offered only to those too poor and lowly to be considered candidates. Barrett sees it in the sky. Tyler feels it one morning while standing naked at the window looking down on the street:

Outside, the snow shifts with a shift in the wind, and it seems as if some benign force, some vast invisible watcher, has known what Tyler wanted, the moment before he knew it himself a sudden animation, a change, the gentle steady snowfall taken up and turned into fluttering sheets, an airy map of the wind currents; and yes are you ready, Tyler? its time to release the pigeons, five of them, from the liquor store roof, time to set them aflight and then (are you watching?) turn them, silvered by earthly light, counter to the windblown flakes, sail them effortlessly west into the agitated air thats blowing the snow toward the East River (where barges will be plowing, whitened like ships of ice, through the choppy water); and yes, right, a moment later its time to turn the streetlights off and, simultaneously, bring a truck around the corner of Rock Street, its headlights still on and its flat silver top blinking little warning lights, garnet and ruby, thats perfect, thats amazing, thank you.

Regardless of your theological position on signs and wonders, that voice, Cunninghams inimitable style, is the real miracle of The Snow Queen. Sentence by sentence and thats just one of them above he moves across the surface of these pages like some suave, literary god. Behold how he swoops in and out of Tylers point of view, breaks the fourth wall, drops ironical quips, mocks and comforts in the same phrase.

Its remarkable, yes, but is it enough to offer salvation to this languid plot? Like good Calvinists, readers will have to take that on faith. The vicissitudes of Barretts love life and the high-stakes fluctuations of Beths health offer a little movement, but Cunningham seems determined to make sure that every momentous action takes place between the chapters rather than during them. Again and again, were let in only after the drama is over.

Such reservations sound sacrilegious given Cunninghams lovely style and flashes of psychological discernment. He writes so wisely about the cruel taunting of remission and the way illness both deepens and frays romantic relationships, endowing the dying with a kind of security and purpose that healthy people crave. His portrayal of the once-blessed Meeks brothers, raised in expectation of fame and riches theyll never attain not even close is full of affecting pathos.

But whats gained by having another dim-witted Adonis wander around this novel with his frank and uncaring beauty . . . his heedlessly perfect body? This is the same pinup boy-toy we saw in Cunninghams previous novel, By Nightfall, though he was more central to that plot. Here, as one of Barrett and Tylers pretty acquaintances, hes just a catalogue hunk, and even the sexual energy inscribed on these pages looks like the faint impression left under eight sheets of carbon paper.

Thematically, too, The Snow Queen eventually reveals itself to be insufficiently ambitious. How many times have we already heard the depressing sermon about overeducated, underemployed New Yorkers bumping up against the disappointing limits of their lives? For all his stylistic elegance, Cunningham doesnt offer the theological sophistication and spiritual insight that, say, Marilynne Robinson might bring to the existential questions this novel poses. And so The Snow Queen struggles to rise higher than its characters grasping efforts to reach the divine. Were left with beautifully articulated ironies and sighs.

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Book World: Michael Cunninghams heavenly style rules in The Snow Queen

Hubble pictures show offers Biblical view of space

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The public is invited to a free show featuring the latest Hubble Telescope pictures from a biblical perspective. Different shows will be presented at 7 p.m. Friday, May 2, and Saturday, May 3, at the Great Bend Seventh Day Adventist Church, 1 mile west of 10th St. and Patton Road (7 SW 30 Ave.) You will be blown away as you see video clips taken with a $125,000,000 Hubble camera, sponsors said. The founder of JMI Telescopes, Jim Burr, has presented lectures on Astronomy from a Biblical Perspective to thousands in churches, youth groups, elementary and high schools, colleges, universities, retirement centers and home-school associations in the U.S., Russia, France, Australia, Panama and the Bahamas since the early 1980s. He has also appeared on many international satellite feeds from Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN), Hope Channel and 32 TV programs for Loma Linda Broadcasting Network (LLBN). Sponsors said Burr is recognized throughout the world for his achievements in telescope design and manufacturing and his design patents for telescopes and astronomy accessories. For more information call 620-793-5096.

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Hubble pictures show offers Biblical view of space

Sunday 4/27/2014 – Tarpley Points Out Fake-OSCE Observers Are Actually NATO Military Officers – Video

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Sunday 4/27/2014 - Tarpley Points Out Fake-OSCE Observers Are Actually NATO Military Officers
Alleged OSCE Observers Held in Slavyansk by Pro-Russian Forces Are Active Duty NATO Military Officers Out of Uniform, Many from Geilenkirchen Intelligence Base Where Awacs Are Flown; Visit...

By: Webster Tarpley Fan Channel

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Sunday 4/27/2014 - Tarpley Points Out Fake-OSCE Observers Are Actually NATO Military Officers - Video

RAF Typhoons Arrive in Lithuania to Reinforce NATO Air Policing Mission – Video

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RAF Typhoons Arrive in Lithuania to Reinforce NATO Air Policing Mission
Royal Air Force Typhoons arrive at Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania to take part in the NATO Baltic Air Policing (BAP) mission over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Lithuanian National Radio and...

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