ESES III

Waiver Rationale Summary

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Code 596, Space Qualified Rover Lidar (SQRLi) Support, has a need for a pin puller, which is a shape memory alloy and a small form factor that has high reliability to satisfy the critical requirements of the SQRLi project and is tightly constrained by mass and space. The pin puller provided by vendor, DcubeD, is the only pin puller that has the reset function, which is one of the project’s key requirements. The NASA technical team compared different types of pin pullers: Shape Memory Alloy, Paraffin Pusher, and Split-Spool; only the Shape Memory Alloy is the preferred type of pin puller, as the other pin puller types are prone to failure or are destructively operated (single use only). Specifications for the shape memory alloy pin pullers were compared from both companies, Deployables Cubed GmbH (DcubeD, a foreign company) and Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense (EBAD, a domestic company). The shape memory alloy pin puller from DcubeD is the only one that can satisfy the mass and size requirements of the system for SQRLi project.