Such a zero-g experiment wants to be well prepared. After the workshop has cleared the first technical questions, we could begin with the updated construction of the test rig.
Here I first have to thank our technical contact at Novespace, Frédéric Gai, for his help with technical issues and his advice. Especially since at that time it was not completely clear that we would be allowed to fly, because we basically "jumped in" on the ESA campaign in 2015 as commercial participants in the last minute. Here I also need to thank Vladimir Pletser from ESA for his effort to clear the path for our flight.
In the end our participation got confirmed, the contract with Novespace was signed, and meanwhile the four flight participants had been found as well. This was very important, as without their sharing of the costs the participation of the MIRIAM-2 experiment would not have been possible.
In 2017 the story was a bit different, as we already had talked to Novespace before, but again we had to struggle with the funding until we got accepted into the ESA GSTP (General Support Technology Programme) in March 2017. This time the preparation was more formal on the side of Novespace, as they already knew our test rig, but contained more tests on our side.
Farther below you can find our preparations before the 2015 and the 2017 parabolic flights.
Experiment short description
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Preparations 2015
In time for the visit of Novespace in the person of Frédéric Gai on September 28, 2015 everything was ready, also thanks to the work of the UniBW workshop staff. The test rig could be inspected and the deployment mechanism could be demonstrated (understandably still without the balloon, because this test is only to happen in weightlessness).
Here you can see a video of the deployment test (with dummy in place of the balloon).
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A big thanks also to the company Etforge, for supporting the building and testing of the cutter circuitry.
On October 10, 2015 the balloon has been stowed in the container, soon after the testrig was finished.
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Preparations 2017
To test the 0g sensorics including the software, which is supposed to indicate the achievement of good zero-g conditions during the parabolic flight before the manually initialized balloon deployment and to clear the deployment during the sounding rocket flight, on Sept. 30, 2017 a zero-g flight with a glider was performed.
On Nov. 11, 2017 another deployment test in the end configuration for the parabolic flight was successfully performed (including software and hardware), then the balloon was folded one last time and packed into its container. Now everything is ready for Bordeaux. |
Unfortunately there was no correct indication of the zero-g state. The identified cause was a software flaw, which meanwhile has been corrected.
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