Onboard 7DOF motion stage as an inertial platform for payloads on sounding rockets

This paper describes an onboard 7DOF inertial platform device to stabilize the attitude of instruments on ISAS/JAXA sounding rocket. The inertial platform was named UMS (Upper Motion Stage) and has been developed on the base of well-known HEXA type multi-link 6DOF motion stage with a spin table device. Using the ability of 7DOF motion stage, UMS will provide payloads on the rocket with more accurate and precise attitude dynamic environment than those that could be achieved using only the built-in coarse spin-rate attitude control system of the sounding rockets. With kinematic and dynamics analysis, recently acquired preliminary motion test results of an engineering model of UMS are shown.