Aas 03-125 Historical Review of Spacecraft Simulators

This paper provides an overview of air-bearing spacecraft simulators. Air bearings have been used for satellite attitude determination and control hardware verification and software development for nearly 45 years. Honeywell Space Systems and Virginia Tech are each developing unique new facilities. During their development, we have become interested in the history of this technology: how early systems were first devised, and what diverse capabilities current systems provide. We begin with a survey of planar systems, those that give a payload freedom to translate and spin. We then discuss several classes of rotational air bearings which simulate three-axis satellite attitude dynamics. We follow with a section on perhaps the most interesting facilities: those that provide both translational and three-parameter rotational freedom. We outline the diverse capabilities each style of air-bearing testbed provides, the many settings they can be found in, and ways to improve facility performance.