SAMS Sensor Head C

The SAMS is an acceleration measurement and data acquisition instrument designed to sense, measure, condition, and record low-level accelerations and vibrations; it documents the actual microgravity environment during experiment operations in space. The SAMS consists of a main control unit and as many as three remotely positioned triaxial sensor heads, each containing orthogonally positioned accelerometers. Cables connect the sensor heads to the main unit, which contains analog and digital signal processing circuitry and two optical disk drives for data storage. NASA transferred a complete SAMS unit to the Museum after it had flown on a variety of missions in the 1990s.