Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 47375
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 11-15-2021 02:15 PM
   
The General Services Administration (GSA) auctioned a metallic space shuttle mockup today (Monday, Nov. 15). The auction, which was export controlled and limited to local pickup only from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, attracted 11 bidders and sold for $5,958. Little information was provided about the mockup's history in the lot description, other than it being 1:10 scale, 12 by 8 feet wide and used for "antenna test support."  It appears the mockup as used to determine the Radio Frequency (RF) coverage for astronauts working on the underside of the space shuttle orbiter for thermal tile inspection and repairing, as demonstrated in orbit on STS-114 in 2005. A series of the Space Shuttle UHF antenna near-field measurements based on the 1/10th scale Space Shuttle mockup were conducted in the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) Anechoic Chamber antenna test facility.The Anechoic Chamber in the NASA Johnson Space Center has a 1/10th scale Orbiter mockup that was constructed for antenna testing. The l/lOth scale UHF antenna was mounted inside the payload bay in this Orbiter mockup. Since the entire test was performed with 1/10th scale hardware, the frequencies used for the testing were 10 times higher than the original frequency (e.g. 4.1565 GHz to model the center frequency of 0.41565 GHz). |
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