Improving the wire boom deployment system used on SPIDER-2
Masters Thesis Presentation by J. Sandgren
Time: Wed 2021-08-25 13.15 - 14.00
Location: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/62713722538
Participating: Jona Sandgren
This project deals with the improvement of a wire boom deployment system to be used on a proposed Rocket Experiments for University Students (REXUS) mission. The system to be improved was previously used on the Small Payload for Investigation of Disturbances in Electrojet by Rockets (SPIDER-2) mission and the objective was to make that system more robust and reliable as well as easier to assemble.
The wire boom system itself consisted of four probes for measuring electric fields as well as four probes to measure space plasma properties. These all needed to be ejected from a free flying unit, while still being attached to it with thin wires. The wires were stored on spools which unwound using a piezoelectric motor and the probes were deployed by releasing a locking mechanism and then pushing them out with springs. Based on that, along with deployment testing of the SPIDER-2 system, the areas to improve where selected. It was chosen to focus on getting the probes out of the hull more reliably and making the spools rotate more evenly while being more constrained. In addition, focus was placed on simplifying assembly and bettering the guiding of the wires wherever possible. To accomplish this, in the end, nearly every part was replaced or altered. This resulted in the system being able to deploy even without any rotation to provide centrifugal force and also made the wire guiding better to decrease the chance of tangling. However, more work remains to be done on the system to finalize the new parts and to make further improvements on parts that were not handled during this project.