Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. The two-stage Electron launch vehicle employs Curtiss-Wright’s rugged, modular Data Acquisition Unit (DAU) technology to acquire flight test data from its onboard analog and digital sensors. The telemetry data acquired from the test flight, which was down-linked via a radio channel to a series of tracking stations, will be analyzed and used to modify and improve the performance of the launcher for subsequent flights.
The Electron’s flight test instrumentation (FTI) system is based on Curtiss-Wright’s innovative Space COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) Acra KAM-500 DAU products, and consists of three 13-slot units, located on the upper and lower stages of the launcher. Each KAM-500 DAU is integrated with a variety of COTS-based vibration, temperature, acceleration, digital, and processing modules. A subset of the acquisition system will also be used on future operational launches. Following analysis of the data from the first test flight, Rocket Lab expects further test flights later in the year.
“Curtiss-Wright is very proud to support the first launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron space vehicle with our industry leading space qualified data acquisition technology,” said Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Defense Solutions division. “It is very exciting for us to contribute to Rocket Lab’s historic efforts, providing COTS-based space avionics for the development, flight test, and operational phases of their pioneering efforts to lower the cost of access to Low Earth Orbit space flight. We look forward to supporting Rocket Lab during their sequence of future test flights later this year and into the future as their operational flights commence.”
