Acceleration mapping on Consort 5

Abstract

The Consort 5 rocket carrying a set of commercial low-gravity experiments experienced a significant side thrust from an apparent burn-through of the second-stage motor just prior to cut-off. The resulting angular momentum could not be removed by the attitude rate control system, thus the payload was left in an uncontrollable rocking/tumbling mode. Although the primary low-gravity emphasis mission requirements could not be met, it was hoped that some science could be salvaged by mapping the acceleration field over the vehicle so that each investigator could correlate his or her results with the acceleration environment at his or her experiment location. This required some detective work to obtain the body rates and moment of inertia ratios required to solve the full set of Euler equations for a tri-axial rigid body. The techniques for acceleration mapping described in this paper may be applicable to other low-gravity emphasis missions.