Adaptable Portable Gravity Offloading System for Deployable Solar Array Structures

Large, lightweight, deployable solar array structures have been identified as a key enabling technology for NASA, with analysis and design of these structures being the top challenge in meeting the overall goals of the NASA Space Technology Roadmap. Deployment ground testing and qualification of these and other deployable structures is a uniquely difficult task, as the intent is to validate microgravity performance and integrity within a 1 g testing environment. Existing gravity offloading test support equipment used for this purpose haveseveral limitations: passive systems dynamically couple the test article to the offloader, active systems are currently limited to single-point offloading, and offloaders are typically immobile and designed for a single application. The proposed SBIR project seeks to improve existing gravity offloader equipment through the development of a portable and adaptable system that can be used for offloading any deployable structure while also improving accuracy through active control. Phase I of this SBIR project will demonstrate feasibility of this system through the development and testing of a prototype offloader unit. In Phase II, a full multipoint offloader system will be developed and demonstrated on a relevant deployable solar array structure.