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Full-Text Articles in Aerospace Engineering
Active Gravity Offloading System With Infrared Tracking For Rover Testing, Travis Wavrunek
Active Gravity Offloading System With Infrared Tracking For Rover Testing, Travis Wavrunek
Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports
Gravity offloading is a tool used to test how different gravitational forces will impact the mobility of rovers bound for Lunar or Martian expeditions. Previous approaches have been successful in simulating partial gravity environments, and this report details how the Infrared- Gravity offload (IRGO) system, developed for the Planetary Surface Technology Development Laboratory (PSTDL) and lunar simulant sandbox, has a similar aim. Through a series of iterations, IRGO has been developed to actively track an infrared beacon and follow a rover within the test chamber to eliminate inertial and friction forces along two horizonal axes. A portion of a rover’s …
Commissioning And Testing Of A New Dusty Thermal Vacuum Chamber, Ben Wiegand
Commissioning And Testing Of A New Dusty Thermal Vacuum Chamber, Ben Wiegand
Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports
The Dusty Thermal Vacuum Chamber (DTVAC) is a new facility purchased by the Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab (PSTDL) that will be used to test the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of extraplanetary devices and systems. With the use of vacuum pumps and simulated regolith, the DTVAC can create extraplanetary environments such as those found on the Moon and Mars. This report details the actions that were taken to prepare the DTVAC for TRL testing, including the development of a Data Acquisition Center (DAC) and test fixtures, along with the findings of baseline tests that were performed to understand the behavior …