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Why Is Balance Key to SOFIA?
| It is necessary to rebalance the
telescope for each science instrumentation that will be loaded
on the SOFIA for a new mission in the stratosphere. The
telescope must be adequately balanced in three dimensions to
enable the pointing and tracking system to operate properly. To
the extent the telescope is unbalanced, small aircraft motions
are translated into torque on the telescope pointing direction.
In the past the Kupier was balanced by trail and error, which
required a highly skilled and trained technician to perform the
balancing techniques. (The classroom experiments will provide
first hand experience of the difficulty in completely balancing
a beam in one only dimension.) Sofia's balancing system will be
designed so that a student should be able to successfully
balance and track a star. The obvious importance of Sofia's
balance is control. Without balance the SOFIA team can not have
control of Sofia's viewing field, and nothing can be
accomplished on the mission. Balance is key to the success of
SOFIA.
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