The Mission

The objective of the project is to design, build, and through observation validate a miniaturized mechanism and a novel process for deployment of wire booms ending with spherical probes.

Ultimately, the design is intended for multipoint measurement of electric and magnetic fields in the ionosphere, where a number of small payloads (≥4) can be released from a single rocket and provide both a temporal and spatial resolution of ionospheric characteristics, for space physics research.

Primary objectives of the experiment:

1. To develop, test, and validate in-flight a miniature version of the wire boom deployment system, to be used for future ionospheric measurements.
2. To observe and interpret the in-flight dynamics of the wire boom system from deployment until retraction, demonstrating the new method of fast wire boom deployment without residual oscillations.

Secondary objective:

1. To measure the current-voltage characteristics of the spheres deployed by the wire boom system in order to demonstrate the capability of probe system for measuring electric fields.