Robotic Asteroid Flyby Scanning Technology - What Equipment Could Be Used?

Some Interesting Points on What a Robotic Asteroid Flyby (Remote Data Acquisition) might consist of, in general terms, that avoids the necessity of "gravity traps" inherent in Moon or Mars landings, and the sort of useless technology that helps to perpetrate boondoggle exploits of most of U.S.'s eventual abysmally expensive budgeting, (by both our NASA and Congress), should help to bring about a new "gold rush", as long as our most popular, yet most monstrously prohibitive mountain of Congressional pork and anti-space rhetoric is overcome - by a hugely massive leap into overcoming the curse of super-heavy lift, earth-to-orbit technology, that so many at the Fed seem to overlook. If this (simple enough) task were overcome, by eliminating the barriers to space exploration on-the-cheap, then there not only would be more competition, but the asteroids would open up a new gold rush, not unlike what America experienced in the 1800's.

Vessels which bring more scanning and radar equipment are key for an initial flyby, to be followed up later with mining and cargo ships. A robotic flyby would consist of a radar system passing the data from a matched filter to a subsystem, referred to as a Detection Processor (DP), that accomplishes data compression by comparing the matched filtered data to a threshold. The potential targets (i.e., those that exceed the threshold) are flagged and the remaining data may be rejected. A block diagram of one possible general DP structure is shown here:

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At the input of the DP is the MCA, or Multi-Channel Analyzer, which involves a FWD radix-4 and INVERSE radix-4 pipeline FFT. After the MCA, is a magnitude calculation which involves a subsystem that approximates the magnitude to the I and Q samples, where I is the intensity of the signal and Q is the number of samples over the block size. Next an amplitude estimator calculates an estimate of the peak amplitude of the signal based upon the amplitude of the three nearest samples.

The constant false alarm rate (CFAR) subsystem provides an estimate of the ambient noise or clutter level so that the threshold can be varied dynamically to stabilize the false alarm rate. The threshold logic unit selects which of several possible thresholds is to be compared with the estimated signal amplitude thru the CFAR or Multi-Channel Analyzer.

There used to be an interesting CFAR data site that listed CFAR processing code, but the link has since expired. However, there are some very unique locations for downloading software to calculate CFAR:

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MCB or Multi-Channel Background, shows the broad spectrum characteristics of the waveform, which is an input to an MCA emulator for analysis. One such MCA unit (not emulator) can be seen at:

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Synthetic aperture radar is a bit more complicated. A typical scintillation circuit diagram is given here:

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This component is analogous to the NaTl component given above, at
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The picture and description of given in the above link as the Canberra Model 802, had a page designed for that specific instrument, about 10 years ago: Description

A Monoline Crystal Assembly which includes a high resolution NaI(TI) crystal, a photomultiplier tube, an internal magnetic/light shield and a chrome plated aluminum housing. Specifications (were): Resolution approximately 8% at 662 keV of Cs-137, Window 0.02 in. aluminum, density 147.9 mg/cm^2, Reflector: oxide 1/16 in. thick, density 88 mg/ cm^2, Magnetic/Light Shield: Conetic lined steel, Typical Operating Voltages: Cathode to Anode +1100 V DC, Dynode to Dynode: + 80 V DC, Cathode to Dynode: + 150 V DC

The pulse is further amplified and analyzed by a multichannel pulse height selector (referring to the MCA component, older pic here:

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, and a more up-to- date example given here:
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, followed by a counter (referring to the counter component here:
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, which is obsolete, and has been replaced by:
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, with data sheet given here:
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This device counts the pulses received in each channel. The resulting photon energy is directly proportional to the intensity of the beam. The intensity is correlated with its associated wavelength, rendering the spectrographic signature. The signature is compared with existing spectrographic data to determine the elements comprising the asteroid.

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American
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Gamma spectrometry tells us exactly what's on the surface, and it even penetrates several meters deep in order to tell us and help quantify the internal elements of its crust.

IR tells us what the surface and residual core heat is, and otherwise color saturation imaging gives us a closeup visual look-see that'll include those unavoidable UV reactive colors of whatever raw elements. Of course we can always use our NASA/Apollo era science of our moon, that'll prove where all this new and improved science instrumentation is going to be perfectly worthless.

These instruments are no longer spendy, large nor all that energy consuming.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

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That what I was getting at, in the above post - A procedure for spaceborne gamma spectrometer data interpretation using the EGS-4 code for Monte-Carlo simulations can obtain theoretical gamma spectra distribution. A study I did a while back included an Introduction, Models and Calculations, Processing of Experimental Data, and the Model Experiment for a 'Monte Carlo type experiment, that would simulate what the scanning returns on an asteroid might consist of. For X-ray imaging at even 100 frames per second, with 64 cells per frame equalling 6400 cells per second (12 bits/cell), there are 64- channel pixel processors available for the most viable candidates.

Components of each cell in a 654-channel pixel processor include a discriminator for which a Discriminate frequency, TTL input, TTL output, Accurate & robust, Digital Frequency Discriminator Calculation can be performed. The chips for these sensors are small enough - an 8 X 8 chip requires a discriminate frequency for each cell and may be tuned for reception of the individual transition frequency emissions of the precious metals. With 100 frames at 64 cells per frame, swaths can be programmed for several transition frequencies simultaneously. In addition to the discriminator frequency, a GHz counter can be programmed by coupling dual modulus-prescaling technique with available phase-locked-loop synthesizer chips that control a prescaler in the TTL-programmable counter.

Reply to
American

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When your talking about GHz frequencies, you are referring to the precious metals:

Wavelength in Angstroms / KEV

Platinum

0.190381 65.122 0.185511 66.832 0.164501 75.368 0.163675 75.748 0.15939 77.785 0.15920 77.878 0.15826 78.341 0.16271 76.199 0.16255 76.27 0.15881 78.069

Gold

0.185075 66.9895 0.180195 68.8037 0.159810 77.580 0.158982 77.984 0.15483 80.08 0.154618 80.185 0.153694 80.667 0.18672 66.40 0.158062 78.438 0.157880 78.529 0.154224 80.391
Reply to
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How the energy level for a particular shell is calculated:

E_n =3D - ( 13.6z^2 / n^2 ) eV

where z is equal to the charge on the molecule ( gold z =3D 79 , platinum z =3D 78 ) and n =3D the shell or energy level number. Frequency of the emitted photon is found, knowing the wavelength, from the relationship frequency =3D c / lamda , where lamda is equal to wavelength in meters ( from table, 1 angstrom =3D 10^-10m ), and c =3D speed of light in meters per second ( 299,792,458 m / sec ). For example, using gold wavelength =3D 0.185075 Angstroms, we calculate frequency =3D c / lamda =3D 2.99792458 x 10^8 / 1.85075 x 10^-8 =3D

1.61984307983 x 10^16 cycles / second or 16,198,430,798,300,000 cps, or 16.198430798300000.00 gigahertz! What Energy level is this? Using the above formula, KeV =3D - ( 13.6 ( 79 )^2 / n^2 ) eV, and recalling that to use n, the atomic shell number needs to be known, we can surmise that gamma-rays can penetrate further into the molecule and produce higher energies than the outer shells.

For this reason, we use n =3D 1 and solve for eV =3D - ( 13.6 ( 79 )^2 / ( 1 )^2 ) =3D 84,877 eV for the energy of the first shell. Note that this value exceeds the value of 66.9895 KeV given in the table. If we use n =3D 2 for the second shell, the value for eV becomes eV =3D - ( 13.6 ( 79 )^2 / ( 2 )^2 ) =3D 21,219.4 eV, which is too low. Therefore, the energy level is taken from one of the two electrons in the first shell. Actually, it is the alpha_2 electron transition between the K and LII shells (from spectral analysis).

Recall that there are 6 energy levels in the gold molecule. From the innermost to the outermost shell, there are 2, 8, 18, 32, 18, and 1 electrons occupying shells. A properly tuned and calibrated gamma-ray spectrophotometer can resolve these minute differences within shells. In fact, the spectrophotometer automatically scans asteroidal surfaces to provide spectral analysis data for what a flyby would consist of.

Reply to
American

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Right, and because these instruments are small, low mass and energy efficient is why the cost per asteroid flyby survey should be really cheap. Of course our moon is actually one heck of an asteroid, and thus far we've been informed of perhaps all of 0.1% about our public funded science (the other 99.9% is still nondisclosure rated).

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

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That's all right, because I've been told that many are noticing how ridiculous the spending gets - even if the whole world chips in:

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...and that is, of course, all ready dependent on the current ultra-expensive lift program that we have with ANY private enterprise, or for that matter, any military budgeted enterprise. The problem as I see it, is that there just isn't enough "payback" to justify all of the hoopla being thrown at having a Moon Base - it's wayyyy too exclusive, if you ask me, the average voter.

I think the key is getting more groups involved in forcing either private industry or Congress (impossible - they'd rather watch Rome burn, while escaping to either Canada or Australia, than get themselves involved in such a win-win for the American people) to accommodate the market motivation for extraterrestrial resource development, which include mining the metals from the asteroids first (the pieces of a once-rogue planet have already been broken down by their spectrographic (infared) signatures, into consumable quantities that the privateer, so to speak, can enjoy), whereas anything 'Moon- sized' is going to be problematic, considering the moon has almost the same gravitational pull as the earth (IMO Newton's concept of gravity is wrong, e.g. an asteroid ~150 miles in diameter can have a surface gravity nearly the same as Earth's). Some asteroids even have miniature moons orbiting around them.

Reply to
American

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Right, accomplishing the moon is only worth a future payback potential of a trillion dollars per month, and its initial investment at 100 billion per month (20+ months of that) is only worth 100 million jobs. Who the hell needs any of that?

In other words, with 7+ billion of us to pay for everything that we always get to pay for anyway, so what if it cost us 10 trillion to set that moon up for operations of accommodating us and our TBMs?

Humans have had so many do-overs, that we obviously don't give a tinkers damn about most others, nor honestly care about our planet. So why not go off-world in a very big way?

Of course my LSE-CM/ISS is an all-inclusive alternative that includes cheap lunar access as well as offering an ideal outpost/gateway/ oasis...

Perhaps a 150 mile diameter asteroid of solid iron and nickel (possibly one of pure thorium and gold) could provide good surface gravity. That's kind of unlikely, if not impossible, but then I haven't actually worked out the math.

William Mook can get us to/from that really big asteroid we call our moon (NASA and Kodak telling us that it's passive and harmless), at not 10% the cost of our dysfunctional NASA and DARPA that always claim to know everything there is to know. Other various captured moons and/ or asteroids can be managed once we have accomplished a suitable infrastructure of TBMs and habitats within our moon.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

19, 5:35=A0pm, Brad Guth wrote:

s, of course, all ready dependent on the current ultra-expensive lift

But Brad, Mook never says anything about just staying in the local asteroid belt, IMO because the Moon remains a NASA-driven agenda. He won't let alone any of the associated technology that could be used to extract useful metals, because that would not be kosher to dump them all in the earth markets, because it (might) crash the value of them. The problem as I see it, is that we're really talking about how both the earth-to-orbit engineering, as well as the orbit-to-asteroid engineering should, at least for a while, be driving the move into space!

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Data Set Overview:

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The five filters listed for observation in the data link:

ECAS u-v color, in column 4 ECAS b-v color, in column 6 ECAS v-w color, in column 8 ECAS v-x color, in column 10 ECAS v-p color, in column 12

The data sets available in the above link can give info on calculating what the reflectances, as well as the transmissives would be, for the different states of metal, in the case that the asteroid in question is of the LL chrondite variety, which means low-low iron consistency.

The spectral emissivity tends to increase with decreasing wavelength. The normal spectral emissivity for Platinum at 1 meter wavelength is approximately 0.25 at 1217degrees K. However, this emissivity is for polished platinum. The emissivity would be higher (0.05 maximum variation) for a less smooth surface. Still, a lower surface temperature (less than 1217 degrees K for platinum) would tend to raise the spectral emissivity variation a maximum of 0.025. The total maximum variation in spectral emissivity would then be about 0.075. Added to the normal spectral emissivity would equal 0.25 + 0.075 =3D

0.325.

The reflectivity, being the inverse of emissivity, would then equal

0.675 for a worst case scenario. At this point, it might be worthwhile to examine the orbits of metallic asteroids to determine that more of these type asteroids are located in the inner asteroid belt, which makes an elliptical path closer towards the sun, and then back towards the earth at closest approach. This fact would then mean that a higher and not lower surface temperature exists on the asteroid during its observation.
Reply to
American

Gamma spectrometry tells us exactly what's on the surface, and it even penetrates several meters deep in order to tell us and help quantify the internal elements of its crust.

*** Here I thought the surface of our own Moon was charcoal black ... what happened to that postulation of yours ???

IR tells us what the surface and residual core heat is,

***IR cannot look deeper than the surface, you putz ...

and otherwise color saturation imaging gives us a closeup visual look-see that'll include those unavoidable UV reactive colors of whatever raw elements. Of course we can always use our NASA/Apollo era science of our moon, that'll prove where all this new and improved science instrumentation is going to be perfectly worthless.

These instruments are no longer spendy, large nor all that energy consuming.

************************************ You ignorant dip ... it is not the cost of the instruments, nor the power consumption that that ever mattered. What made it so costly has always been the worry about contamination by Earthly critters (germs, viruses etc) that could be deposited in virgin territories. The clean-room entry and scrub-down procedures take a financial toll that far outweighs and manufacturing costs.
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If you mean "earth virgin territories" rather than asteroidal regolith itself, then I don't see any contamination in the earth sphere, unless a refined, 'raw' type of regolith makes its way out of deep space, through the orbital plane, and onto the earth's surface. Of course, the act of refining metals at high temperatures (in orbit) should remove any of the contaminating bacteria, if that was the case.

Reply to
American

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Mook's way cheaper fly-by-rocket alternatives can be used for anything you like. Obviously you like doing it the spendy expendable NASA/ DARPA way.

Btw; diverting asteroids to becoming LEOs or perhaps smacking them into the far side of our moon could be double the value, because they can't continue to be a threat to Earth. Processing of those lunar impact sites would be fairly simple, because of the existing TBMs and their mineral processing infrastructure for doing just that. Of course all of those previous craters should also be metallicity treasure troves.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

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On the moon would be solar and fission powered processing of the 3.5 g/ cm3 basalt, so why not use that same energy for processing those heavy metallicity bits of asteroids?

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

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Again you're depending first on a moon base being set up for ??? purposes - which I sense is more of a strategic position, than a marketable one. Don't you believe that energy wars are the reason that all the stops are being pulled out to make "wars for profit" rather than a greater intelligent use for free energy than we've had in the past? Actually, the euphemism "free energy" is a misnomer. The equipment that should produce the free energy, like solar, must have a start-up cost, to cover the expense of R&D, and taking the product to market effectively. The military/industrial complex has made it all too easy to repeat the mistakes of our invalidating "peer" technology, as long as that kind of technology can never become involved in "reinventing" itself in different spaces or environments. That is the source of the problem, IMO. Instead of reinventing the engineering that goes into the production of electricity, for example, increasing micromanagement of wayy-too compartmentalized scientific culture, tends to make ordinary common sense of the bigger picture, into a rules game of "I've got mine - nothing else to see here - and there will be absolutely no transferable skill set - as long as we're engaged in the heat of battle, by the military industrial complex."

The "heat of battle", or for that matter, "the heat of enforced ignorance" must mean that the best of us can't group ourselves into larger, self-organized, engineering establishments - and again, we're looking at the problem of why, after WWII, did the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) NOT include "Engineering" into its organization, so that it would be named the "American Association for the Advancement of Science AND Engineering"???

Reply to
American

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No doubt those are all good potential asteroids to capture and mine. I'm sure that India and China (possibly Russia) will be taking care of those for us. You do realize that William Mook had this all mapped out as of years ago.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

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That moon is perhaps only worth a trillion dollars per month. Go figure.

We can send fresh frozen pizzas and beer to our moon as is, not to mention everything else that's necessary. As long as you remain anti- moon (just like our NASA), means that pretty much anything else is off the table, that is unless you plan on culling humanity down to 500 million anytime soon.

Earth needs way cheaper and cleaner energy, as well as loads of new metallicity resources that isn't going to destroy whatever's left of our frail environment in order to obtain it and deal with it.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

Pretty clear that is not what sterilization prior to being shipped out means. The concerns are:

- is there non-terrestrial life out there, or even recognizeable terrestrial "precursors", without us bringing it with us?

- if there is life out there already, why should it be necessarily exposed to ours?

If we flood the signal with noise...

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David A. Smith

Reply to
dlzc

It's actually a mystery, why earthlings would be so concerned about bringing germs into an extraterrestrial environment, unless there were a "more advanced" species present in that environment. Notice how I have put quotes around "more advanced". How morally relative are we to be, concerning our own permanence, if there are other species in extraterrestrial environments, that could outlive (the weaker of) us, in increments of hundreds, or even thousands, of years?

Here I'm not deciding to be the weaker species (not physically weak, but weak in terms of longevity), but one of those who dare contemplate the contingencies of what living off-world for hundreds - maybe even thousands of years, before the "elements" should ever catch up to the organism. In other words, you bring the life with you, not the other way around.

Reply to
American

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The corrected math at $55/gram yields a 100% platinum asteroid worth of $9.65e18

Even if it were only 0.1% pure, that's still $9.65e15 (9.65 thousand trillion)

Of course, TBMs excavating 1e7 m3/day out of our physically dark and tough as carbonado moon, and if only 0.0001% (1ppm) of that daily excavated and processed volume were platinum =3D 10 m3/day, and the good news is that operating within the moon you'd be perfectly failsafe from the worse our sun and cosmic influx has to offer, as well as you'd be perfectly warm (day or night), along with any amount of atmospheric quality and pressure as you'd like, as well as impacting meteors and asteroids couldn't possibly get to you, not to mention your portable phones and computers would still have you connected to Earth via surface transponders at only a very slight delay.

The current platinum price is above $55/g With a density of 21.45 g/cm3 makes each m3 worth 21.45e6 g

55 * 21.45e6 =3D $1.1798e9/m3 10 m3 of platinum =3D $11.798e9/day (just for that one metallicity element)

You could also efficiently commute just above the surface of our moon at up to 2.4 km/sec, whereas any faster would give escape velocity.

There's also lots of nifty element processing that'll directly benefit from all that available hard vacuum, not to mention the unlimited sunlight energy of 1.4 KW/m2, and of course Earth would always be enormous and looking absolutely bluish planetshine vibrant, especially via 250 mm telephoto lens.

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Brad Guth, Brad_Guth, Brad.Guth, BradGuth, BG / =93Guth Usenet=94

Reply to
Brad Guth

Dear Brad Guth:

On Feb 21, 5:11=A0pm, Brad Guth wrote: ...

In an evolutionary sense, that is insufficient challenge to elicit a change.

- the need to breed and cover the planet, so that anything that does not lose the atmosphere, or melt the surface everywhere, will allow some survivors.

- the ability to survive an ice age

- written language

There will be survivors. That we cover the planet assures there will be pandemic. That we hop from country to country in less than the gestation period of illnesses, assures it will be global.

I don't believe so. Civilization will collapse, and new religions will spring up... no doubt.

Sorry if you truly feel that way.

David A. Smith

Reply to
dlzc

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