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Abstract In the past decades, space missions to small bodies (Galileo, OSIRIS‐REx, Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, Chang'e 2, Rosetta, etc.) have enriched us greatly with voluminous new knowledge on our solar system. In situ observations by these missions have revealed the extreme complexity and remarkable diversity of the spatial environment around their target asteroids. A study on the motion of objects in such complex environments is of great importance for understanding the evolution history of surface/subsurface materials on the asteroids. Establishing a reasonable dynamic model is obviously a crucial step. This paper proposes a method for tracking the motion of an object near the surface of an arbitrary asteroid. This method combines the irregular shape, an unlimited rotational state and asymmetric gravitational field, which are three key factors that dominate the complex movement of an object on and off the asteroid's surface. The gravitational attraction and potential are computed using the polyhedral method with corrections for the possible singularities. The asteroid's surface is then approximated using a continuous and differentiable surface, and the parametric representation forms of the body are derived based on polynomial series. An event‐driven scheme is designed, so that the orbital motion and surface motion are processed separately by checking the triggering events. The algorithm was implemented using C++. Benchmarking tests are organized on a local cluster, showing a satisfactory performance in both accuracy and efficiency. This method was further applied to improve the control accuracy of the landing spot of an asteroid surface lander.

In order to further clarify the relationship between the free volume and bending plasticity, the bending properties of Zr65Cu17.5Ni10Al7.5 bulk metallic glass (BMG) samples with different thicknesses corresponding to different solidification cooling rates were investigated. The results show that the bending plasticity of Zr65Cu17.5Ni10Al7.5 BMG decreases with the decrease of cooling rate, which is consistent with the evolution of shear bands density revealed by the investigation of microstructure. These phenomena are mainly attributed to the decrease of free volume content with the decrease of cooling rates in spite of the increase of nanocrystallization fraction, which further confirm that free volume plays a crucial role in the deformation process of the BMGs.

Watts-level ultra-short wavelength operation of a Tm-doped all fiber laser was developed by using a 1550 nm Er-doped fiber laser pump source and a pair of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). The laser yielded 1.28 W of continuous-wave output at 1707.01 nm with a narrow linewidth of ~44 pm by means of a 20 cm Tm-doped fiber. The dependencies of the slope efficiencies and pump threshold of the Tm-doped fiber laser versus the length of active fiber and reflectivity of the output mirror (FBG) were investigated in detail, in which the maximum average slope efficiency was 36.1%. There is no doubt that this all fiber laser will be a perfect pump source for mid-IR laser output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]