Space Experience
ULA Delta II
A United Launch Alliance Delta II heavy booster, equipped with an ACRA CONTROL distributed system in a master/remote configuration, was used to launch the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Dawn solar-electric powered asteroid orbiter. Having first passed rigorous flight environment testing, the data acquisition system was installed in a highly hostile location near the rocket motors. It performed flawlessly during the duration of the flight, with good telemetry data throughout. Further successful missions featuring ACRA CONTROL on the Delta II include GLAST and OSTM.
SpaceX
Launch services company Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) selected ACRA CONTROL’s digital flight instrumentation f+or their Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft. ACRA CONTROL was selected because of the company’s credentials on previous launchers, COTS products and willingness to accommodate customer specific technological needs.
IXV
ESA selected ACRA CONTROL to provide the Data Handling and Telemetry Subsystem for the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle (IXV) to acquire the large quantities of mission data used to verify the performance of critical re-entry technologies as well as critical vehicle systems performance data. The Data Handling. System for IXV will consist of COTS Data Acquisition, Network Switch and Recorder products and will store data onboard as well as provide a telemetry stream in CCSDS compatible format via S-Band transmitters to ground.