LARES is a passive satellite designed to measure the gravitomagnetic field of Earth predicted by Einstein general relativity. The technique used to accurately measure the satellite position is the laser ranging technique. The satellite is uniformly covered with 92 cube corner reflectors that sends back to the ground station the laser pulses. Launch is foreseen in 2010 with the new VEGA launch vehicle. The material selected for building the satellite is a tungsten alloy. Due to this peculiar alloy used for LARES satellite, some concerns arise about the machinability of the material. Although several producers can provide several types of tungsten alloys, and there are applications that use bulk tungsten material, to our knowledge this material, very seldom used in space, was never machined with tight manufacturing tolerances and severe surface finish. Consequently some tests for machinability have been performed. Particular care has been adopted for manufacturing spherical cavities that are used to interface the separation system. Also the screws and the retainer rings for the cube corner reflector mounting system are difficult items to be manufactured in tungsten alloy, being the screw body and the ring thickness very small. All those technological challenges have been faced on several breadboards (full scale prototypes of critical small parts of the satellite).
TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FOR MANUFACTURING LARES SATELLITE / Paolozzi, Antonio; Ciufolini, Ignazio; Vendittozzi, Cristian; F., Passeggio; L., Caputo; G., Caputo. - ELETTRONICO. - 7:(2009), pp. 1-6. (Intervento presentato al convegno 60th International Astronautical Congress tenutosi a Daejeon; Korea, Republic of nel 12-16 October 2009).
TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FOR MANUFACTURING LARES SATELLITE
PAOLOZZI, Antonio;CIUFOLINI, IGNAZIO;VENDITTOZZI, CRISTIAN;
2009
Abstract
LARES is a passive satellite designed to measure the gravitomagnetic field of Earth predicted by Einstein general relativity. The technique used to accurately measure the satellite position is the laser ranging technique. The satellite is uniformly covered with 92 cube corner reflectors that sends back to the ground station the laser pulses. Launch is foreseen in 2010 with the new VEGA launch vehicle. The material selected for building the satellite is a tungsten alloy. Due to this peculiar alloy used for LARES satellite, some concerns arise about the machinability of the material. Although several producers can provide several types of tungsten alloys, and there are applications that use bulk tungsten material, to our knowledge this material, very seldom used in space, was never machined with tight manufacturing tolerances and severe surface finish. Consequently some tests for machinability have been performed. Particular care has been adopted for manufacturing spherical cavities that are used to interface the separation system. Also the screws and the retainer rings for the cube corner reflector mounting system are difficult items to be manufactured in tungsten alloy, being the screw body and the ring thickness very small. All those technological challenges have been faced on several breadboards (full scale prototypes of critical small parts of the satellite).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
