Am. Inst. of Aero. & Astro.

Applied mathematics in integrated navigation systems, 3d ed.

Rogers, a consultant to the Department of Defense and NASA, explains elements of integrated navigation systems and describes applications in this text/reference for those directly involved with the design, integration, testing, and evaluation of navigation systems. For the purposes of the discussion, the integration of onboard navigation and independent navigation data is accomplished with Kalman filter algorithms. The first section of the book covers basic mathematics, kinematics, equations for describing navigation systems/sensors and their error models, aids-to-navigation, and Kalman filtering. Detailed derivations and examples are presented, and chapter problems are included. Chapters in the second section describe applications in areas such as inertial navigating system ground alignment, in-motion alignment, and attitude-determination and estimation. With this third edition, software for exercises can be downloaded from a web site. Readers are assumed to have background in mathematics, including calculus. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Combustion instabilities in liquid rocket engines; testing and development practices in Russia.

Prepared by the former director of research and development of the largest liquid rocket testing center in the world and edited by an array of American experts, this describes the technology captured by Russian and former Soviet Union researchers seeking to determine the required quantitative margin of operating process stability in liquid rocket engine (LRE) combustion chambers and gas generators. They describe hard and soft excitations in transitions, converting propellant to combustion products, testing at various stages of combustor development, and studying acoustics in combustion chamber stability, natural disturbances, artificial pressure disturbances, injector head elements, pressure oscillation decrements, pulsing liquid-liquid chambers, and gas-liquid chambers. They close by describing the stability characteristics of engines with adjustable injectors and the control of stability in the proton engine. Fully illustrated, this is a good study of theory as well as of the evaluation techniques the researchers developed. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Space operations; mission management, technologies, and current applications.

Selected papers from the June 2006 Ninth SpaceOps Symposium, 36 in all, shed light on aspects of space mission operations and ground data systems. Contributors are from space agencies, academic institutions, and industry. The papers have been reviewed to assess technical accuracy, completeness, and usefulness, and were also analyzed regarding clarity, logical organization, and emphasis of importance to space operations. They are organized here in sections on mission management, standards, ground systems, communications and tracking, automation, planning tools and advanced technologies, Earth orbiting missions, operations experiences, and Moon, Mars and beyond. Because the papers selected provide a snapshot of current terminology as it was employed in various presentations and roundtable discussions, and a glossary of "buzz words" used during the symposium is included. Bruca is affiliated with Argenzia Spaziale Italiana. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)