STS-40 orbital acceleration research experiment flight results during a typical sleep period

The Orbital Acceleration Research Experiment (OARE), an electrostatic accelerometer package with complete on-orbit calibration capabilities, was flown for the first time aboard the Space Shuttle on STS-40. This is also the first time an accelerometer package with nano-g sensitivity and a calibration facility has flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The instrument is designed to measure and record the Space Shuttle aerodynamic acceleration environment from the free molecule flow regime through the rarified flow transition into the hypersonic continuum regime. Because of its sensitivity, the OARE instrument defects aerodynamic behavior of the Space Shuttle while in low-earth orbit. A 2-hour orbital time period on day seven of the mission, when the crew was asleep and other spacecraft activities were at a minimum, was examined. During the flight, a 'trimmed-mean' filter was used to produce high quality, low frequency data which was successfully stored aboard the Space Shuttle in the OARE data storage system. Initial review of the data indicated that, although the expected precision was achieved, some equipment problems occurred resulting in uncertain accuracy. An acceleration model which includes aerodynamic, gravity-gradient, and rotational effects was constructed and compared with flight data. Examination of the model with the flight data shows the instrument to be sensitive to all major expected low frequency acceleration phenomena; however, some erratic instrument bias behavior persists in two axes. In these axes, the OARE data can be made to match a comprehensive atmospheric-aerodynamic model by making bias adjustments and slight linear corrections for drift. The other axis does not exhibit these difficulties and gives good agreement with the acceleration model.