Antenna deployment in cold vacuum

After the highly successful second thermal vacuum test, MinXSS went back into the chamber to do a thermal balance test, whose purpose it is to validate our thermal model. We stowed the tape measure antenna (yes, literally a tape measure), tied it up with monofilament (otherwise known as fishing line), and watched it deploy under vacuum while the temperatures inside realistically resembled an orbit environment. We caught slow motion video of the deployment, at 240 frames per second. Check it out! You can see the black door snap open in a fraction of a second, the antenna rapidly uncoil, and then oscillate for a long time. That wobbling didn’t settle down for several minutes.

We are extremely happy to see this successful deployment in an environment as space-like as we can possibly get. Now if someone would invent antigravity, we could do this test in a cold, vacuum, 0 g environment!