Passive Non-Rocking Vibration Isolation System for Earth Science Payloads

Dynamic loads can cause big problems for satellites both during launch and during on-orbit operation. The best solution for attenuating these dynamic loads is to incorporate vibration isolation either at the launch vehicle-to-satellite interface or at the satellite-to-component interface. Conventional passive vibration isolation systems have been successfully flown at both of these interfaces. It is believed, however, that much greater isolation performance is achievable with a new type of isolation system. The innovation is to develop a passive vibration isolator that provides low-frequency axial isolation without the attendant low-frequency ?rocking? or lateral modes. In other words, the ratio of axial stiffness to rocking stiffness would be very high compared to that of a conventional isolation system. This is desirable because for whole-satellite isolation, very low rocking modes can cause guidance instabilities and for component isolation, the rocking modes can increase optical jitter. This isolation technology will be of great use in future NASA Earth Science platforms because it will provide dynamically stable structures utilizing integral vibration control. Earth-sensing instruments will perform better with significant reduction in jitter due to the non-rocking isolation systems. Similarly, NASA satellites will be better protected from launch loads with lower frequency whole-satellite non-rocking isolation systems.