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Scientific Research: Polymer Research on the Space ShuttlePolymer Research on the Space Shuttle |
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J. Gordon Electronic Design provided electronic engineering and software development for a research apparatus launched aboard the NASA Space Shuttle. The apparatus, designed for polymer research, included a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, motor control, high accuracy temperature control, a 3-axis accelerometer, data acquisition and compressed archival of data.
Space research apparatus included a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer, temperature control and instrumentation, motor control, and accelerometer to study polymer processing in near zero gravity.
68020 based VME system gathered 2 Gigabytes of data in orbit while providing various control functions. Post flight data analysis was done on super computers under a Unix environment.
J. Gordon Electronic Design provided electronic engineering and computer programming for the research apparatus launched aboard the shuttle. The apparatus included a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, motor control, high accuracy temperature control, data acquisition, and compressed archival of the data. In addition to collecting research data, the shuttle environment was constantly monitored by temperature sensors, and 3-axis accelerometers with .00001G sensitivity.
Post flight processing involved decompressing and analyzing the data using Fourier transforms and other mathematical applications. Much of the analysis was done via a network link to the Minnesota Super Computer Center. Working under a Unix environment on the super computers, J. Gordon Electronic Design developed additional software specifically for the data analysis. It took over 2 years to fully analyze the 2 gigabytes of data collected in 8 days of orbit on the shuttle. |
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