Drop Tower Microgravity Improvement Towards the Nano-g Level for the MICROSCOPE Payload Tests

摘要

The Bremen drop tower at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) provides high quality micro-g condition needed for many high precision tests. This is even more improved by the development of a free flyer technology. This new technology is used for a free fall test of the MICROSCOPE differential accelerometers which only can work with a residual acceleration disturbance level below 25 nano-g in the high resolution mode. The French MICROSCOPE space mission for testing the Weak Equivalence Principle is scheduled for 2012/2013. The free fall accelerometer test campaign at ZARM is an important part of the pre-mission test program. In this article the new free flyer technology, its perfor-mance as well as the accelerometer tests are described.