NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
Product Development: Concept Formulation, Design, Analysis, Manufacturing, Assembly and Testing.
In collaboration with GSFC, Newton developed the Ground Support Equipment (GSE) Application for Tilt or Rotation (GAToR), a high precision pointing mechanism used in the testing and calibration of the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) at NASA Goddard.
NASA GSFC requested specialized engineering and product development services for a high precision pointing mechanism to be used to calibrate a precision remote sensing instrument: OCI.
The Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) is a highly advanced optical spectrometer that will be used to measure properties of light over portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will enable continuous measurement of light at finer wavelength resolution than previous NASA satellite sensors, extending key system ocean color data records for climate studies.
OCI makes use of a rotating telescope to scan the surface of the Earth’s oceans. In order to test and calibrate OCI, the telescope must be pointed with extreme precision. To accomplish this, Newton developed GAToR.
GAToR is capable of pointing OCI, an instrument that weighs over 800lbs, to 0.002 degrees repeatably in two axes. It can rotate from -110deg to +110deg and tilt from -90deg to +30deg elevation, and allows the user to stop at any angle in between with an absolute accuracy better than +/-0.001deg. And it has been certified and meets all pertinent NASA requirements for safety, design, and analysis. For development, Newton:
• Designed, analyzed, manufactured, assembled, and tested GAToR to meet and exceed all contractual requirements - safety, technical, cost, and schedule;
• Developed a control system to rotate and tilt OCI with an absolute accuracy better than 0.004 deg.;
• Created a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to easily command GAToR;
• Delivered GAToR with all the pertinent tags and certifications required for critical GSE;
• Provided continuous engineering support to train users.
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