Characterization in dynamic load environment of COTS synthetic sapphire bearings for application in magnetic suspension in space

The present research investigates the application of a cardan suspension making use of permanent magnet (PM) bearings employed to obtain high reliable/low-cost solutions for the permanent alignment of directional payloads such as laser reflectors for the Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR) experiment or antennas to be deployed on the moon’s surface. According to Earnshaw’s Theorem, it is not possible to fully stabilize an object using only a stationary magnetic field. It is also necessary to provide axial control of the shaft since the PM bearings support the radial load but, they produce an unstable axial force when losing alignment between the stator and rotor magnets stack. In this work, the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sapphire as axial bearings in the cardan suspension has been investigated by testing their behavior in response to some of the dynamic loads experienced during the qualification tests for space missions. The work is innovative in the sense that COTS sapphire assembly has never been investigated for space mission qualification. As Artemis mission loads have not been yet provided for NGLR, test loads for this study are those used for the proto-qualification of the INFN INRRI payload for the ESA ExoMars EDM mission. Tests showed that, along the x and y directions, no damages were produced on the sapphire, while, unfortunately, on the z direction both sapphires were badly damaged at nominal loads.