Sticky_Boom_Rev1.AVI

This is Mike Judson with Altius Space Machines and Harsha Prahlad of SRI International giving our first Sticky Boom proof-of-concept demonstrator a try. This movie was taken on Friday March 11th around 2:30am at the SRI facility in Menlo Park, CA. This Sticky Boom demonstrator was assembled in just over a week by Mike Judson, myself (Jonathan Goff), Harsha Prahlad, Steve Traugott of CD International, and Chris Biddy of Stellar Exploration Inc.

We built this in order to have hardware to demonstrate at the NASA Technology Day at the Capitol Hill Visitors Center in Washington DC on March 15th. Altius was the youngest of the 13 groups presenting there, which included groups like Robonaut 2, and NASA MSFC's Nanosail-D team (which used the same style of deployable boom as we did.

The boom deployer came from Stellar Exploration, and was the first prototype of their LightSail-1 triple cubesat-based solar sail deployer (developed for The Planetary Society). The electroadhesive gripper was a fixed-geometry design that SRI put together. The motor, motor controls, and plastic case were done by Altius personnel at Steve Traugott's shop in Santa Clara, CA. The case was laser-cut acrylic done using an Epilog laser cutter at Bojo Inc's facility two doors down from where Masten Space Systems started in 2004.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Sticky Boom
• Stellar Exploration
• SRI International
• Altius Space Machines
• Electroadhesion
• Rendezvous and Docking
• Tractor Beam
• NASA Technology