An Air Floating Suspension Microgravity Simulator for Multi Specification of Spaceborne SAR

Abstract

Microgravity Simulators are significant equipment for spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) on-ground test. Considering the diversity of spaceborne SAR specification as well as SAR’s high working accuracy, this paper provides a novel air floating suspension microgravity simulator equipped with both active and passive gravity compensation mechanism, which realize the high-precision microgravity simulation of spaceborne SAR with different structures and kinematic characteristics. The simulator also provides adjustable frames to guarantee the simulation stability of the SAR in different poses. In addition, the simulator’s corresponding horizontal tracking control system and vertical constant tension control system are also provided in this paper, which realize the tracking of the SAR movement. Finally, the simulation and experiment are provided to verify the effectiveness of the microgravity simulator.