Design and Development of a 5-DOF Air-Bearing Spacecraft Simulator

The Five Degrees of Freedom Air-bearing Spacecraft Simulator (5DOFASS) is designed at Harbin Institute of Technology for the purpose of simulating spacecraft autonomous formation flying and orbital maneuver. The 5DOFASS contains an attitude platform supported on a hemispherical air-bearing and a translation platform floated on three linear air-bearing feet, which provides a very low friction and 0-g environment in an Earth-bound laboratory. In this paper, the design and development of the 5DOFASS is described in detail, including working principle, structure, and control system. Some ongoing research problems and future plans are reported at the end of the article.