Tuesday, 17th January 2017 two of us made their way to Oberpfaffenhofen early in the morning to visit the DLR for our bench test.
On Tuesday we unpacked our equipment and prepared for an air-bearing test. These activities included work on the battery platform that we use on mobile RaCoS tests and counterbalancing the setup, so that we can test on a balanced system (e.g. eliminating unwanted influences).
Later that day the first short test run commenced and looked promising for the tests on Wednesday.
Wednesday two more team members arrived and we could start an array of air-bearing tests to look more closely at our system performance and operation of the control algorithm. We made a video that day about the air-bearing tests, which you can find on our
Youtube-Channel.
After we were done with these tests we had a comm check test with the other experiments on REXUS 22 in which we all were connected to the service module and checked incoming and outgoing signals. That test concluded the day.
Coming back on Thursday we had the ‘real’ bench test scheduled. First in an open configuration were all experiments were electrically connected to each other but not mechanically. After completing and successfully finishing that test we had some time to prepare for the next and final stage of the bench test were all experiments also get mechanically attached to each other in the configuration which will fly to space in March this year. In the afternoon this test was successfully finished and ended the official activities at DLR/MORABA.
On our last day we came in early to pack RaCoS and the necessary equipment for the launch campaign in Sweden in containers, ready to ship to Esrange. Then we tidied up our workstations, said everybody good bye and made our way back to Würzburg.
Thanks again to all other teams and the people responsible for the great time at the bench test!
We will see each other at the launch campaign and can hardly wait.
For some impressions of the bench test visit our gallery at
Bench Test and see among other things DLR and the MORABA-Lab from the inside.
