ADVANCED SUSPENSION SYSTEM FOR SIMULATING ON-ORBIT CONDITIONS

SIMULATING THE WEIGHTLESS CONDITION OF ORBIT IN GROUND-BASED BEAM POINTING AND TRACKING EXPERIMENTS REQUIRES A MEANS FOR OFFLOADING THE WEIGHT OF THE BEAM DIRECTOR FROM THE SERVO SYSTEM THAT CONTROLS ITS POSITION AND ORIENTATION. A SUSPENSION SYSTEM MUST SUPPORT THE BEAM DIRECTOR WITH ONLY MODEST STATIC DEFLECTION UNDER ITS WEIGHT AND WITH MINIMAL CONSTRAINT FORCES DUE TO SUSPENSION STIFFNESS, MASS, FRICTION, OR VIBRATION MODES. THE PROPOSED PHASE I DEVELOPMENT WILL INVESTIGATE THE APPLICATION TO THE OFFLOAD PROBLEM OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN SUSPENSION SYSTEMS FOR GROUND VIBRATION TESTING OF LARGE, FLEXIBLE SPACE STRUCTURES. A SUBSCALE, FLOOR-STANDING (SUPPORT FROM BELOW) SUSPENSION DEVICE WILL BE BUILT BASED ON THE PNEUMATIC/ELECTRIC CONCEPT PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED BY CSA ENGINEERING. IT WILL SERVE AS A TESTBED FOR DEVELOPING A LARGE (6000-12000-LB PAYLOAD) SYSTEM USING MULTIPLE DEVICES.