Rapid Energy Dissipation in a Yo-Yo-Type Wire Boom Deployment System

A wire boom deployment system has been developed that uses a mechanism that is similar to the classic yo-yo despin mechanism. The goal has been to develop a way to rapidly deploy wire booms from a spinning soundingrocket experiment. The main challenge in using a yo-yo-type mechanism is to dissipate the excess kinetic energy so that the wire booms do not rewrap themselves about the spacecraft after deploying. A ring has been added to the basic yo-yo mechanism. It rotates with respect to the main spacecraft about the nominal spin axis, and the wire boomsdeploy from it. Thering/spacecraftjoint isdamped, and relativemotion betweenthering and thespacecraft dissipates the excess energy. This system is analyzed and simulated in two and three dimensions. The results show that a well-tuned system can deploy 2.5 m wire booms in under 20 s and that it can tolerate the expected levels of asymmetry and parametric uncertainty.