Neodymium doped YVO(4) is becoming an increasingly popular material for solid state lasers. Among the advantages of vanadates over more traditional materials are that the absorption cross section at 808 nm is significantly larger, the emission cross sections are higher, leading to lower lasing thresholds, and the bandwidth for pump absorption is higher. We report new measurements of the refractive index and thermo-optic coefficient of this material that will aid in the design of laser cavities and other nonlinear optical elements.

Rare-earth orthovanadates are being used as substitutes for traditional solid-state laser hosts, such as YAG. While the most common of these is yttrium orthovanadate, other rare-earth vanadates, such as lutetium vanadate and gadolinium vanadate, are being used for their special properties in certain applications. We report new measurements of the refractive indices and thermo-optic coefficients of these materials, which will aid in the design of laser cavities and other nonlinear optical elements.

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Drogue parachute damping is required to dampen the Orion Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) crew module (CM) oscillations prior to deployment of the main parachutes. During the Apollo program, drogue parachute damping was modeled on the premise that the drogue parachute force vector aligns with the resultant velocity of the parachute attach point on the CM. Equivalent Cm q and Cm a equations for drogue parachute damping resulting from the Apollo legacy parachute damping model premise have recently been developed. The MPCV computer simulations ANTARES and Osiris have implemented high fidelity twobody parachute damping models. However, high-fidelity model-based damping motion predictions do not match the damping observed during wind tunnel and fullscale free-flight oscillatory motion. This paper will present the methodology for comparing and contrasting the Apollo legacy parachute damping model with fullscale free-flight oscillatory motion. The analysis shows an agreement between the Apollo legacy parachute damping model and full-scale free-flight oscillatory motion.