Microscope instrument in-flight characterization

Since the MICROSCOPE instrument aims to measure accelerations as low as a few 10(-15) m s(-2) and cannot operate on ground, it was necessary to have a large time dedicated to its characterization in flight. After its release and first operation, the characterization experiments covered all the aspects of the instrument design in order to consolidate the scientific measurements and the subsequent conclusions drawn from them. Over the course of the mission we validated the servo-control and even updated the PID control laws for each inertial sensor. Thanks to several dedicated experiments and the analysis of the instrument sensitivities, we have been able to identify a number of instrument characteristics such as biases, gold wire and electrostatic stiffnesses, non linearities, couplings and free motion ranges of the test-masses, which may first impact the scientific objective and secondly the analysis of the instrument good operation.

Automated summary

The characterization experiments of the MICROSCOPE instrument included validating and updating the servo-control and PID control laws, as well as identifying instrument characteristics such as biases, stiffnesses, non linearities, couplings and free motion ranges. These findings contribute to consolidating the scientific measurements and improving the instrument design.