CASA-ARL Facilities Information

This laboratory was developed for such activities as bonding the grating glass to the titanium supports. This facility includes: a fume hood, several GN₂ purged dessicator cabinets, a tap and storage of purified water, and a clean bench. The room is also purified with filtered air from a HEPA blower. All bonds carried out of this laboratory have exceeded their design strength.
 

This facility includes a water purification system, dual ultrasonic tank cleaning system, clean bench, clean bagging system, and GN₂ lines. The room is supplied with filtered air from a HEPA/blower unit. Cleanroom protocols are followed by all personnel. A set of cleaning protocols have been tested and established for the preparation of flight hardware and for vacuum GSE.
 

The shop consists of two mills, a lathe, a band saw, a drill press, and several small shop and hand tools.  The shop is available to university trained faculty, staff, and students.  This facility has proven invaluable for small projects, quick fabrications and emergency modifications.
 

The UV sounding rocket assembly lab is used by Graduate students to assemble and test their scientific payloads. Final tests are done in the Long Tank.	Area for fabrication and testing of GSE and flight electronics components. It also contains several ESD workstations and various test equipment.

The Command Center is set up surrounding the exterior of the Large Vacuum Chamber. A cable tray carries the communication and power cables from the chamber flanges to individual workstations. Several workstations provide data acquisition and control for many of the spectrograph components. The command center is served by an extension of the campus Ethernet with internet connectivity. All of the above  workstations run software developed in-house and communicate with on-line database. The database is responsible for tracking all data and images taken during integration and test activities; this database is also used to track all purchases, track inventory for controlled stores, display information requested by scientists.

This chamber is used for final calibration of rocket payloads and has been used by several other institutions.  The Long Tank is 30" in diameter and 30' long with an internal collimator implemented as a reverse Newtonian telescope. The chamber is pumped by a large roughing pump and a 20" cryopump.