We developed a prototype of the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass spectrometer (NIM) of the Particle Environment Package (PEP) for the JUICE mission of ESA. NIM will be used to measure the chemical composition of the exospheres of the icy Jovian moons. The NIM prototype was successfully tested under realistic conditions and we find that the closed source behaves as expected within the JUICE mission phase velocities. No additional fragmentation of the species recorded with the closed source is observed.

The total solar eclipse event on Svalbard on 20 March 2015 gave us a unique opportunity to image the upper parts of the Sun's atmosphere. A novel image accumulation filter technique is presented that is capable of distinguishing features such as loops, spicules, plumes, and prominences from intense and blurry video recordings of the chromosphere.

The focus of the paper is estimating profiles of water vapor and temperature with high accuracy from microwave radiometer measurements, performed for the month of August 2011 as part of the Integrated Ground Campaign during the Cloud Aerosol Interaction and Precipitation Enhancement Experiment (CAIPEEX-IGOC). To improve the accuracy of retrieved profiles Bayesian optimal estimation has been used along with optimized background data set.

By computer simulations, we explore and quantify how to use radiation emitted by molecular oxygen in the Martian atmosphere to measure the magnetic field from the crust of the planet. This crustal magnetic field is important to understand the past evolution of Mars. Our method can measure the magnetic field at lower altitudes than has so far been done, which could give important information on the characteristics of the crustal sources if a mission with the required instrument is launched.

Radio-frequency interference (RFI) can significantly contaminate the measured radiometric signal of current spaceborne L-band passive microwave radiometers used for monitoring essential climate variables. A 385-channel hyperspectral L-band radiometer system was designed with the means to quantify the strength and type of RFI. The compact design makes it ideal for mounting on both surface and airborne platforms to be used for calibrating and validating measurement from spaceborne sensors.

Presented work allows estimation of buried source without any prior knowledge of underlying formation. This paper deals the application of continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and Euler deconvolution methods to estimate the source depth using magnetic anomalies. These methods are utilized mainly to focus on the fundamental issue for mapping the major coal seam and locating magnetic lineaments over Jharia coalfield, India.

A new technique, tuned PSO, is developed for optimal convergence, avoiding traps of local minima and computing the model parameters: amplitude coefficient factor, shape factor and depth. A number of exercises were done to select the PSO learning parameters. The applicability and efficacy of the proposed method is implemented on synthetic and field gravity anomalies. The analysed results were compared with published results by other methods that show a significant agreement with the real model.

A numerical inversion approach to detect and localize inclusions in thick walls under quasi-periodic natural solicitations is presented. It is based on a preliminary analysis of surface temperature field evolution with time. This analysis is improved by taking advantage of a priori information provided by ground-penetrating radar reconstructions. In this way, it is possible to improve the accuracy of the images achievable with the stand-alone thermal reconstruction method.

This paper introduces a hands-on, low-cost device (German industrial property right no. 20 2014 106 048.0) that uses common adapters to mount p-ED-XRF devices so that these can provide bulk-sedimentary chemistry data from non-destructive measurements at the surface of a split sediment core or from other solid samples. The strength of combining p-ED-XRF analyses with this new sample chamber is demonstrated by exemplary sediment cores from an archaeological research project.

Investigations of Mars – its atmosphere, surface and interior – require simultaneous, distributed in situ measurements. We have developed an innovative prototype of the Mars Network Lander (MNL), a small lander/penetrator with a 20 % payload mass fraction. MNL features an innovative Entry, Descent and Landing System to increase reliability and reduce the system mass. It is ideally suited for piggy-backing on spacecraft, for network missions and pathfinders for high-value landed missions.

The Canary Islands Long-Baseline Observatory (CILBO) is a stereoscopic camera setup on the Canary Islands Tenerife and La Palma. Both cameras observe the same volume in the sky to determine high-precision orbits of entering meteoroids. Both cameras are identical; however they show different brightness or velocity distributions of the observed meteors. This work analyses different observational bias effects to determine and understand, e.g. camera pointing or observation time-dependent effects.

Work has been done to overcome the problems of evapotranspiration on a large scale for better water resources management, especially in arid environments.

The current work is aimed at the quantification of the hydrological drought indices' response to soil salinity. Work has been done to overcome the problems of soil salinity on a large scale for better water resource management, especially in arid environments.

Plasma waves are important observational targets for scientific missions investigating space plasma phenomena. Conventional plasma wave receivers have the disadvantages of a large size and a narrow dynamic range. We proposes a new receiver that overcomes the disadvantages of conventional receivers. The analog section of the new receiver was realized using application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology in order to reduce the size, and an ASIC chip was successfully developed.

Monitoring and attributing changes in Earth climate requires high-radiometric-accuracy spectral measurements of sunlight reflected from the Earth's surface. The HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science (HySICS) is a new imaging spectrometer intended to ultimately achieve ~ 0.2 % radiometric accuracies, being ~ 10 × better than existing spaceflight instruments. We describe the results from a high-altitude balloon flight demonstrating techniques intended to meet these high-accuracy requirements.

Particle swarm optimization is developed to estimate the model parameters of a 2.5-D sedimentary basin. PSO have been implemented on synthetic data and two field data. An observation has been made that PSO is affected by some levels of noise, but estimated depths are close to the true depths. The PSO results are well correlated with borehole samples and provide more geological viability than Marquardt results. Despite its long computation time, it is very simple to implement.

Intrinsic permeability of snow is an important parameter that regulates snow–atmosphere exchange. Current permeability measurements require specialized equipment for acquisition in the field and have increased variability with increasing snow heterogeneity. To facilitate a field-based, volume-averaged measure of permeability, we designed and assembled an acoustic permeameter. When using reticulated foam samples of known permeability, the mean relative error from known values was less than 20 %.

In this study, we propose a more accurate method for calculating the current velocity from the nanovolt-scale current-induced electric field as measured using an expendable current profiler (XCP). In order to confirm the accuracy of the proposed data processing method, a sea test was performed, wherein ocean current/electric field data were collected from the sea surface to a depth of 1000  m using an XCP.

The new wind reconstruction algorithm developed in this article extends the amount of available sols from the Viking Lander 1 (VL1) mission from 350 to 2245. The reconstruction of wind measurement data enables the study of both short-term phenomena, such as daily variations in wind conditions or dust devils, and long-term phenomena, such as the seasonal variations in Martian tides.