Overview of Closed Loop Results for MACE

Abstract

This paper presents closed loop results and insight from the on-orbit experiments of the Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE). MACE was flown in the shuttle middeck on STS-67 in March 1995 to investigate issues associated with a change in operational environment from ground to space based operations of a payload pointing spacecraft that cannot be tested in a realistic ground simulation. These results show that equivalent performance can be obtained using finite element based and measurement based control, the benefits available from testing a structure on the ground, even in a different configuration to that used on-orbit, and the limitations associated with various control topologies. These MACE results provide much insight into how future on-orbit closed loop experiments can be improved.