More Space Geek Stuff
Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2018 7:02 am
I've mentioned before, to distraction, that I'm currently privileged to be designing the electronics for a CubeSat which will be launched as part of NASA's SLS EM1 mission. Last Wednesday and Thursday, we tested the flight articles for the solar sail, and its deployer. A video showing a time lapse of the full sail deployment, and a normal time close-up excerpt of the deployer mechanism and sail in the early stages of deployment is linked below.
During the first portion of the video, the guy in the bunny suit (we are all inside a large 10k clean room) walking around the deployment table like a mother hen, is the mechanical designer. One of the difficulties in testing space hardware is being in a 1g gravity well. The adjustments you see him making are correcting for the results of friction due to gravity. We used furniture sliders to reduce the friction of the booms on the teflon-coated cloth, and at ~0:20 you can see where we have attached gravity off-load devices (cleverly disguised as helium balloons
)
In the video, I'm the guy in the white suit (name tag A.B.Normal), with a blue hood, hovering over the laptop which sends commands to, and receives status information from the motor driver board.
Local media, and National Geographic were there, recording images and video for later distribution.
The testing was a success, so the sail will be refolded, and stored on the spool. The next time it will be unfolded will be somewhere between the Earth and Moon, on its way to an asteroid.
Enjoy:https://images.nasa.gov/details-NEAScou ... yment.html
dave boling
During the first portion of the video, the guy in the bunny suit (we are all inside a large 10k clean room) walking around the deployment table like a mother hen, is the mechanical designer. One of the difficulties in testing space hardware is being in a 1g gravity well. The adjustments you see him making are correcting for the results of friction due to gravity. We used furniture sliders to reduce the friction of the booms on the teflon-coated cloth, and at ~0:20 you can see where we have attached gravity off-load devices (cleverly disguised as helium balloons
)In the video, I'm the guy in the white suit (name tag A.B.Normal), with a blue hood, hovering over the laptop which sends commands to, and receives status information from the motor driver board.
Local media, and National Geographic were there, recording images and video for later distribution.
The testing was a success, so the sail will be refolded, and stored on the spool. The next time it will be unfolded will be somewhere between the Earth and Moon, on its way to an asteroid.
Enjoy:https://images.nasa.gov/details-NEAScou ... yment.html
dave boling
