The Electronics Subsystem is the heart of the scatterometer and it contains a transmitter, receiver and digital signal processor. It generates and sends high radio frequency (RF) waves to the antenna. The antenna transmits the signal to the Earth's surface as energy pulses. When the pulses hit the surface of the ocean it causes a scattering affect referred to as backscatter. A rough ocean surface returns a stronger signal because the waves reflect more of the radar energy back toward the scatterometer antenna. A smooth ocean surface returns a weaker signal because less of the energy is reflected. The echo or backscatter is routed by the antenna to the SES through waveguides (rectangular metal pipes that guide RF energy waves from one point to another). The SES then converts the signals into digital form for data processing. - winds.jpl.nasa.gov

QuikSCAT

NASA awarded its first rapid spacecraft acquisition (RSA) contract to Ball Aerospace for the QuikSCAT. RSA provides NASA a faster, better, cheaper method for the purchase of satellite systems, allowing for shorter turnaround time from mission conception to launch.

The QuikSCAT mission employs a variation of the Ball Aerospace Commercial Platform 2000 (BCP 2000) bus. The BCP 2000 provides NASA with the stable and highly accurate Earth remote-sensing platform it sought to replace the data lost by the failure of Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (EOS) in June 1997.

Launched on June 19, 1999, Ball Aerospace's BCP 2000 carries the SeaWinds scatterometer sensor, built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to record sea surface wind speed and direction data for global climate research. Winds over the oceans affect air-sea changes in heat, moisture, gases, and particulates that are important for weather predictions.

In addition to building the spacecraft bus, Ball Aerospace was responsible for the integration and test of the total space segment consisting of the BCP 2000 bus and the scatterometer payload. We facilitated the spacecraft-to-launch vehicle integration and provided launch support and continues to provide mission control and operations. - ballaerospace.com

QuikSCAT operates in a near polar orbit. Its angle of inclination is about 98 degrees, which means that according to a compass it is flying north by north-west at a directional angle of 352 degrees when it is ascending (i.e. south to north). It flies in a circular orbit at an altitude of approximately 800 km above sea level. It completes a full orbit in about 101 minutes, which translates to a little more than 14 orbits per day.

The Instrument. SeaWinds is the main instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite. SeaWinds is an active radar scatterometer. This scatterometer operates by transmitting high-frequency microwave pulses to the ocean surface and measuring the echoed radar pulses bounced back to the satellite. The scatterometer estimates wind speed and direction over the Earth's oceans at 10 m above the surface of the water by analyzing the backscatter from the small wind-caused ripples, called cat's paws, on the surface of the water. When the microwave pulses strike the ocean surface, it causes a scattering affect referred to as backscatter. A rough ocean surface returns a stronger signal because the waves reflect more of the radar energy back toward the scatterometer antenna. A smooth ocean surface returns a weaker signal because less of the energy is reflected. QuikSCAT can acquire hundreds of times more observations of surface wind velocity each day than can ships and buoys, and can provide continuous, accurate and high-resolution measurements of both wind speeds and direction regardless of weather conditions.

SeaWinds uses a rotating dish antenna with two spot beams that sweep in a circular pattern. It actively transmits 13.4 GHz microwave pulses (Ku-band radar) at a rate of 1 pulse every 5.4 ms. The pulses are alternately polarized, vertical and horizontal. It uses the same parabolic antenna for both pulses, with different feeds. The antenna rotates at a rate of 18 rotations per minute. The feeds on the antenna are set up so that the vertical polarized beam has an elevation angle of 45 degrees and the horizontal polarized beam an elevation of 39 degrees. This creates an outer and an inner beam.

Plasma

The four states of matter are as follows: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. This last term is relatively unknown outside of the scientific world. What is plasma? How does it get the distinction of a state of matter? This article will address the nature and expanding science of plasma.

Plasmas were identified by the English scientist William Crookes in 1879. He noted that plasmas are mixtures of particles and fields. They are found in everything from the sun to quarks, the smallest particles in the universe. Plasmas can generate explosions, freeze, carry electrical currents and support magnetic fields within themselves. Almost the entire universe is made of plasma, and it existed before any other forms of matter came into being. Space plasmas can contain enough heat to melt the earth thousands of times over. Crystal plasmas can freeze the earth at least a hundred times, one after the other. (The northern lights are one example of cooler plasma, or the interaction of the earth's atmosphere with solar winds.) And plasma can actually exist in a state about the size of a cell nucleus-an incredibly dense pinpoint of matter.

The term "plasma" was initially applied to ionized gas. Plasma is actually what fills the so-called "empty" space between the sun and the earth, and also most nebulae and stars. The space it fills between the earth and the sun is actually most characterized by the "solar wind," or the plasma emissions of the sun. Imagine heated waves moving from the sun, and the Big Bang, through the universe. This is plasma's common form in space. The key to this concept is the idea of movement. Plasmas consist of electrons and ions moving around in a contained space. Often, the ions are trying to return the neutral state of a Noble gas by filling their electron levels. Plasmas can come together into a neutral gas, but can never stay in this state due to the ions within them. We are just now learning to control plasma by using the electric and magnetic fields within them to steer them. Looking at the idea of plasma, one can see that it is possible that the universe is shaped and controlled by plasma's magnetic and electric fields.

So in a nutshell, plasma is made of atoms. Atoms contain a balance of positive and negative charges, brought on by negatively-charges electrons moving around a positively-charges nucleus. Plasma occurs when this balance is set to heat, or another form of disruption. Ions an negatively charged electrons make it different from a solid, liquid or gas.

Some of the areas of human research on plasma include plasma-based heating, technology, and wave and electric beams found in plasma fields. Superconductors are being improved with information gained from plasma. A fusion reactor is in the making, the will use plasma to create a source of electric and magnetic energy. Plasma is confined, then heated, to produce an extremely volatile source of potential energy. It is hoped that plasma will eventually provide a boundless energy source for the solar system. - essortment.com

Inverse Faraday Effect in a Plasma

J. Deschamps*, M. Fitaire*, and M. Lagoutte*

Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, Faculté des Sciences, 91 Orsay, France

Received 18 September 1970

We have shown experimentally that a magnetic field is created by the electrons of a plasma subjected to high-power pulses of circularly polarized microwaves. The experimental results confirm the predictions concerning this phenomenon, known as the inverse Faraday effect.

prola.aps.org

The effect is magnetization of any material by an electromagnetic beam at any frequency which contains a degree of circular polarization. It is rigorously reproducible and repeatable. It was first inferred theoretically by Piekara and Kielich in articles in Acta Physica Polonica of the mid to late fifties. It was reinferred in a different way by Pershan at Harvard in the early sixties and first observed experimentally in about 1965 by van der Ziel, Pershan and Malmstrom at Harvard in a variety of materials at visible frequencies. It was confirmed experimentally in plasma at 3.0 GHz in 1970 by Deschamps, Fitaire and Lagoutte. Recently B(3) fields of millions of gauss (tens of tesla) have been oberved with VULCAN by the Imperial College / Rutherford Appleton Group and many observations of the effect are reported in the literature

FINISHED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVERSE FARADAY EFFECT

In this contract under the Naval Research Center (a part of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program), the University of Florida is studying the "Sensory Consequences of Electromagentic Pulses Emitted by Laser Induced Plasmas." In other words, how much pain can be induced by these directed energy weapons without causing physical damage?

The document has a fairly high level of redaction, including - unbelievably - almost half of its bibliography. Still, it reveals some interesting things, including a detailed look at inducing agony by directly activating the skin's receptors that encode pain without means of heat, chemicals, or physical contact.

Military Contract for Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP) Pain Study