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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 103 - Seattle - February 2009
Agenda Location	6 SUBCOMMITTEE B-- MISSILES AND SPACE 6.2 The SPHERES Experiment
Title	The SPHERES Experiment
Presenter	Javier de Luis
Affiliation	Aurora Flight Sciences
Available Downloads*	presentation video
	Downloads are available to members who are logged in and either Active* or attended this meeting.
Abstract	The Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage, and Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) testbed has been deployed on the International Space Station since May, 2006. SPHERES provides a unique, long-term, risk-tolerant facility for GN&C testing under long-term microgravity conditions. The facility is suitable for testing satellite cluster operations where the effects of the proximity of spacecraft to each other, such as during docking maneuvers, as well as the effect of microgravity on their performance, is critical to the expected results. It consists of three fully-functional mini-satellites which operate inside the Space Station. Algorithms are uploaded by investigators on the ground, and can be run autonomously or with limited interaction. Each SPHERE has an IMU, a relative position system, as well as cold gas thrusters for maneuvering. They also each have an expansion port, where additional instrumentation can be attached. In this talk, the SPHERES hardware will be described, and select on-orbit experimental results and video will be presented. In addition, opportunities for guest-investigator collaborations will be outlined.