Technical

- Steven you did a great job!!

Technical issues:

The technical issues during the flight were very simple problems that were soved very easily and quickly.

During the preperation, of the experiment for installation, we were told that the base plate was too small, not giving us enough room to bolt the experiment into the A300. A quick modification of the strategy for bolting the experiment down was designed. Since we weren't able to use the torque wrench, we just tightened the bolts as tight as we could, and it worked, nothing moved!

During the flight, someone from another team accidentally bumped our "emergency off" button. We lost a couple of parabolas image data. This was really no problam at all, we simply rebooted the computer and kept going. At least we know the button works!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following instruments are contained in the rack:

  1. Light microscope equipped with an electronic ocular (digital camera)
  2. pH meter
  3. High performance spectrophotometer
  4. Electrical

Each instrument will monitor a sample contained in an individual light-tight box with low-level, constant internal illumination.

 

 

 

The Bresser-Maede Biolux EP 40 × - 1024 × microscope and compatible electronic ocular (digital video camera) have been selected

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The electronic pH meter will be used to measure pH changes over time throughout the flight. The Analyticon instrument corporation Hand-held portable pH Meter: HM-21P pH Meter is a possible solution.

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The spectrophotometer has not yet been defined. Commercially available spectrophotometers are being researched. The team is in contact with Dr. Werner Schmidt of Fachbereich Biologie/Botanik der Universität Marburg, Lahnberge, Germany, who has carried out high-performance micro-spectrophotometer experiments on the Parabolic flight.

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This is a schematic diagram of the experiment:

 

The electrical requirements from Novespace have been considered, and the design of the electrical configuration is such.

220V-AC will be used for all instruments. The estimated power drawn for the notebook would be 70-80 VA. The power drawn by the spectrophotometer, microscope, lights, and slide moving mechanism are not yet known. However, none of them are high power instruments and total power use will be well below the 2000 VA limit.
2200mAH AA NiHM Batteries (for regular flash light) will be used for the illumination.

  • The whole electrical circuit will be protected by a fast fuse, adjusted to the experiment electrical consumption.
  • The whole electrical circuit will be protected by ground fault interrupter adjusted at 30mA.
  • The whole electrical circuits will be fitted with one, and only one, emergency switch-off button (5 cm red pushbutton on yellow box, installed in a such way to be easily accessible by safety team) disconnecting all electrical equipment and 220V-AC and 28 V-DC power supply coming from aircraft electrical panel.

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