Gimbal Mechanism for Extreme Environments

The Venus or Titan EXploration (VORTEX) gimbal is a low Size, Weight, and Power, high performance pointing mechanism capable of supporting future aerobot exploration missions as well as other missions with extreme environments. Scaled from Tethers Unlimited Inc.rsquo;s (TUIrsquo;s) existing COBRA carpal-wrist gimbal, the VORTEX gimbal provides continuous full hemispherical-plus pointing with accuracies better than 0.5 degrees and supports slew rates of better than 30 degrees per second at less than 5W operational power. Currently at TRL-4, the VORTEX gimbal features an improved design that protects vital components to make it compatible with wide temperature ranges, radiation, and chemically corrosive environments.nbsp;nbsp;In the Phase I effort, we will continue development of the VORTEX gimbal by defining system requirements, improving our gimbal model and design tools, and conducting necessary trade studies to complete detailed system and sub-system designs in preparation for producing an engineering development unit that will be used for testing and flight qualification in follow-on efforts.