The air-bearing spin facility was developed to determine experimentally the effect of energy dissipation upon the motion of spinning spacecraft. The facility consists of an air-bearing spin table, a telemetry system, a command system, and a ground con¬trol station. The air-bearing spin table was designed to operate in a vacuum chamber, specifically the Dynamic Test Chamber (DTC) located in the Test and Evaluation (T&E) Division, Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Tests were run on spacecraft components such as fuel tanks, nutation dampers, reaction wheels, and active nutation damper systems. Each of these items affected the attitude of a spinning space¬craft. An experimental approach to determine these effects was required because the dissipation of these components could not be adequately analyzed. The results of these experiments have been used, with excellent results, to predict spacecraft motion.
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