Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Klein, Michael J..
None given. This is a presentation to the Townes Blue Ribbon Panel, October 5-6, 1996. Covers NASA'a overall mission planning, with emphasis on technologis being developed along the way.
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Measurements of Jupiter's microwave radio emission from 1990 through August 1995 are reported and analyzed to study the rate of decay in the synchrotron radiation following the dramatic increase observed in July 1994 during the week of impacts by fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. The observations were made at 2295 MHz as part of the NASA-JPL Jupiter Patrol, a long-term radio astronomy monitoring program begun in 1971. Data from 34-meter and 70-meter antennas at the NASA's Deep Space Communication Complex at Goldstone, CA are used to estimate slope and curvature of plausible 'baselines' for Jupiter's non-thermal flux density over the five-year interval. These 'baseline' estimates are then used to derive decay times for the outburst emission related to the SL-9 impacts.
The microwave flux densities of Venus and Jupiter at 32 GHz have been measured using a calibration standard radio telescope system at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) during April and May of 1993. These measurements are part of a joint JPL/Caltech program to accurately calibrate a catalog of other radio sources using the two bright planets as flux standards.
An account is given of the methodology as well as the results of coordinated Venus emission observations conducted at four wavelengths between 1.35 and 3.6 cm; the results are compared with other observations and with calculated mission spectra, with a view to suggestions that the microwave spectrum of Venus could be sensitive to the subcloud abundance of such constituents as SO2 and gaseous H2SO4. The observed emission spectrum is consistent with an average subcloud abundance of gaseous H2SO4 in equatorial and midlatitude regions of about 5 ppm. An upper limit is established for the subcloud SO2 abundance.
NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project utilizes two complimentary search strategies: a sky survey and a targeted search. The SETI team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have primary responsibility to develop and carry out the sky survey part of the Microwave Observing Project. The paper describes progress that has been made to develop the major elements of the survey including a two-million channel wideband spectrum analyzer system that is being developed and constructed by JPL for the Deep Space Network. The new system will be a multiuser instrument that will serve as a prototype for the SETI Sky Survey processor. This system will be used to test the signal detection and observational strategies on deep-space network antennas in the near future.
The application of SETI data to radio astronomy is studied. The number of continuum radio sources in the 1-10 GHz region to be counted and cataloged is predicted. The radio luminosity functions for steep and flat spectrum sources at 2, 8, and 22 GHz are derived using the model of Peacock and Gull (1981). The relation between source number and flux density is analyzed and the sensitivity of the system is evaluated.