Design, manufacturing, and assembly of the GRASS small body gravimeter spring
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Discipline
Physical sciences
Subject
Asteroids
Bending (forming)
Laser beam cutting
Solar equipment
Tropics
Bending spring
Cubesat
Didymos
Dimorpho
GRASS
Hera mission
Instrumentation
Low gravity environment
Small bodies
Space gravimeter
Gravimeters
Audience
Scientific
Date
2024Metadata
Show full item recordDescription
The GRAvimeter for small Solar System bodies (GRASS) is a novel spring-based gravimeter for the application in extremely low-gravity environments on small bodies in our Solar System. It is one of the Juventas CubeSat payloads as part of the ESA Hera mission to measure the surface gravity on the asteroid moon Dimorphos. The GRASS gravimeter was successfully launched on-board Hera on 7 October 2024. Key element of this instrument is the gravimeter spring, a cantilever-type bending spring, allowing for measurements at arbitrary instrument orientation. This paper presents the design, manufacturing, and integration of the developed sensing element assembly. The spring design can serve as a future reference for data analysis of the gravimeter data obtained in-situ on extraterrestrial surfaces. The manufacturing process is detailed, including the raw material, laser cutting, heat treatment, and gold sputtering. The step-by-step assembly describes the integration of the spring assembly which includes the clamping of the spring and the tip mass, added to the spring to realise larger deflections and henceforth increase the sensitivity of the instrument for the small body gravity environment.
Citation
Noeker, M.; Ritter, B.; Van Ransbeeck, E.; Karatekin, Ö. (2024). Design, manufacturing, and assembly of the GRASS small body gravimeter spring. , CEAS Space Journal, DOI: 10.1007/s12567-024-00574-8.Identifiers
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Type
Article
Peer-Review
Yes
Language
eng