Vibration Isolation Design for the Micro-X Rocket Payload

• Main Authors: Heine, Sarah Nicole Trowbridge (Contributor), Figueroa-Feliciano, Enectali (Contributor), Rutherford, J. M. (Contributor), Wikus, P. (Contributor), Oakley, P. H. H. (Contributor), Porter, F. S. (Contributor), McCammon, D. (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Science+Business Media, 2014-07-25T16:56:49Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Micro-X is a NASA-funded, sounding rocket-borne X-ray imaging spectrometer that will allow high precision measurements of velocity structure, ionization state and elemental composition of extended astrophysical systems. One of the biggest challenges in payload design is to maintain the temperature of the detectors during launch. There are several vibration damping stages to prevent energy transmission from the rocket skin to the detector stage, which causes heating during launch. Each stage should be more rigid than the outer stages to achieve vibrational isolation. We describe a major design effort to tune the resonance frequencies of these vibration isolation stages to reduce heating problems prior to the projected launch in the summer of 2014.