Ken-ichiro MAKI

Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) is a mission to Martian moons under development in JAXA with international partners to be launched in 2024. This paper introduces the system definition and the latest status of MMX program. “How was water delivered to rocky planets and enabled the habitability of the solar system?” This is the key question to which MMX is going to answer in the context of our minor body exploration strategy preceded by Hayabusa and Hayabusa2. Solar system formation theories suggest that small bodies as comets and asteroids were delivery capsules of water, volatiles, organic compounds etc. from outside of the snow line to entitle the rocky planet region to be habitable. Mars was at the gateway position to witness the process, which naturally leads us to explore two Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, to answer to the key question. The goal of MMX is to reveal the origin of the Martian moons, and then to make a progress in our understanding of planetary system formation and of primordial material transport around the border between the inner- and the outer-part of the early solar system. The mission is to survey two Martian moons, and return samples from one of them, Phobos. In view of the launch in 2024, the phase-A study was completed in February, 2020. The mission definition, mission scenario, system definition, critical technologies and programmatic framework are introduced int this paper.

A solar power satellite (SPS) is a renewable energy system that converts the sun's energy into electricity in space and transmits it to Earth using microwaves. The SPS concept, first proposed in 1968 in the United States, has recently started attracting increased public attention as a promising energy system that can be used to resolve global environmental and energy problems. One of the most challenging technologies for the SPS is microwave power transmission from the geostationary orbit to the ground. The technologies for microwave power transmission have been studied for more than 40 years since the initial demonstrations in the 1960s; however, for SPS application, considerable research, especially on high-efficiency power conversion between direct current (dc) and radio frequency (RF) and on high-accuracy microwave beam control over a long range, is still needed. This paper introduces the concept of SPS and presents the technologies and issues associated with microwave power transmission from space to ground. Current research status and the future development prospects for microwave power transmission toward commercial SPS use are also described.

A terahertz (THz) beam steering method is demonstrated by applying the characteristic of grating lobe (GL) radiation from a linear array antenna and the interference of femtosecond optical pulses. A photoconductive device is illuminated by two femtosecond laser beams combined at an angle of less than 0.5 degrees. Considering the interference pattern as a THz point source array, THz GL radiation is generated through the superposition of radiation emitted from all point sources and steered by varying the interval of the interference pattern. The THz beam direction could be changed by 20 degrees at 0.93THz by varying the relative incidence angle of the pump beams by 0.033 degrees. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America

We have investigated the characteristics of a terahertz (THz) beam steering method based on a combination of difference-frequency generation (DFG) with the principle of the phased array antenna. In the DFG of THz radiation from a nonlinear optical crystal pumped by optical beams, the phase front of the THz radiation is indirectly tilted by adjusting the relative incidence angle between the pump beams to the crystal. A magnification of the steering angle with a factor of 193 is demonstrated as the most important effect provided by the method. The effect allows the use of a high-speed optical deflector for adjusting the incidence angle, accelerating the steering more than a hundred times compared with mechanical methods. The phase mismatching between the THz radiation and the pump beams as well as the refraction at the crystal surface limit the steering angle of the THz radiation to 56 degrees, full width at half maximum.

We present a THz beam steering method that is based on the generation of grating lobe(GL) radiation from linear array antenna and interference principle of femtosecond laser beam. THz GL radiation with the bandwidth of 110GHz was generated from a strip-line photoconductive antenna. As the pump beam two femtosecond laser beams were combined with finite angle and produced an interference pattern. We demonstrated that the THz GL radiation can be steered by adjusting the relative incidence angle between two pump beams. The direction of the THz beam was changed by 20 degrees when the incidence angle of one pump beam was only varied by 0.1 degrees.