Boom Deployment Clears Way For Cluster Commissioning

TECH SPACE

Now that they are all fully deployed from the spinning satellites, the booms will sweep out a giant circle in the electrified gas (plasma) around each spacecraft and provide a flood of data for the five instruments within the Wave Experiment Consortium (WEC) on each Cluster satellite.

Paris - Nov. 17, 2000
Last week the final boom deployment on the Cluster quartet was successfully completed when all four wire antennae on the Tango spacecraft were fully extended to a length of 44 m. This brought to an end a remarkable two-month-long sequence which involved 64 separate operations to unravel 16 booms (a record) and deploy around 700 m of wire (also a mission record).

The successful conclusion of this complex process was due to the tremendous dedication and hard work of the scientists and the mission operations team in the control room at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

"Every step was a critical operation," said Silvano Manganelli, the ESOC engineer in charge of the 16 boom deployments. "Our first activity was to fire small pyro devices to open the doors on the booms. This was very stressful, since there was nothing we could do if this went wrong. All 16 devices worked perfectly -- an excellent achievement."

"We also had to be very careful that there was no large asymmetry of the booms as they were released on opposite sides of the spacecraft," he added. "Otherwise, there would have been problems for the experiments and the spacecraft dynamics. This procedure has been done on a single spacecraft before, but never on four identical spacecraft in such quick succession."

One further complication was the need to increase the spin rate of each satellite in order to deploy the last 1 1/2 m of wire. This final piece of very thin cable, to which the wave experiment's probe was attached, was released by relying upon centrifugal force to "throw" the wire outwards.

"My colleagues from the flight dynamics department monitored this manoeuvre very closely, and did a remarkable job," said Mr. Manganelli. "In each case they were able to predict the effects of the deployment and then calculate the manoeuvres needed to bring the spin rate back to within a few hundredths of a revolution per minute of the nominal value."

"My colleagues and I want to thank everyone at ESOC, particularly Silvano, for all their hard work," said a delighted Per-Arne Lindqvist, Chairman of the WEC. "We really appreciate the support given to us during this long deployment campaign."

TECH SPACE

Boom Time Begins For Cluster
Paris - September 11, 2000

The Cluster mission will be booming over the next six weeks. During a carefully planned series of operations, 16 wire booms, each almost 50 metres in length, will gradually be released from the spinning satellites.

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