Funding Awarded for New Addition to the HSFL Satellite System Testing Facility
HSFL has been awarded a new grant for ~$765,000 from the FY 2012 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) toward the purchase and installation of a state-of-the-art Attitude Control System Test Bed. This test bed simulates the space environment using different simulators with a high degree of precision for sensor inputs: load free (equivalent to zero gravity testing), sun luminescence, GPS, and Earth’s magnetic field. “This will greatly increase the capabilities of HSFL and our COSMOS [Comprehensive Open-architecture Space Mission Operations System] project,” commented HSFL’s Dr. Trevor Sorensen upon receiving award confirmation on May 30, 2012 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Photo (left) shows the ACS Test Bed setup with an air-bearing table inside the Earth-magnetic-field simulator, GPS simulator, and sun simulator system.