DEVELOPMENT OF MODELS FOR HIGH PRECISION SIMULATION OF THE SPACE MISSION MICROSCOPE

Abstract

MICROSCOPE is a French space mission for testing the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP). The mission goal is the determination of the Eotvos parameter with an accu- racy of 10 15 . This will be achieved by means of two high-precision capacitive differential accelerometers, that are built by the French institute ONERA. At the German institute ZARM drop tower tests are carried out to verify the payload performance. Additionally, the mission data evaluation is prepared in close cooperation with the French partners CNES, ONERA and OCA. Therefore a comprehensive simulation of the real system in- cluding the science signal and all error sources is built for the development and testing of data reduction and data analysis algorithms to extract the WEP violation signal. Cur- rently, the High Performance Satellite Dynamics Simulator (HPS), a cooperation project of ZARM and the DLR Institute of Space Systems, is adapted to the MICROSCOPE mission for the simulation of test mass and satellite dynamics. Models of environmen- tal disturbances like solar radiation pressure are considered, too. Furthermore detailed modeling of the on-board capacitive sensors is done.