AEROSPACE INDUSTRY
UPDATE
February 2015
McIlvaine Company
Satellites Ready for
Cleanroom Installation
Another two Galileo satellites have touched down in French
Guiana ready to take their place in Europe’s satellite navigation constellation.
The pair, safely cocooned inside their air-conditioned
containers inside an Air France Boeing 747, landed at Cayenne–Félix Eboué
Airport. They were then taken by lorry to be installed in the cleanroom
surroundings of Europe’s Spaceport to begin final preparations for launch.
The seventh and eighth Galileo satellites will be launched
together by Soyuz in late March, resuming the interrupted building of the satnav
constellation. The previous Soyuz launch saw the satellites released into the
wrong orbit.
The reason for the malfunction has been pinned down to an
installation error in the Fregat upper stage that delivers the satellites into
their final orbits. A hydrazine fuel line was bracketed next to a liquid helium
line, freezing the hydrazine and resulting in Fregat’s faulty orientation.
Arrival in French Guiana is the final stop in a complex
production and test line that snakes back across Europe. The satellites are
built by OHB in Bremen, Germany, with their navigation payloads coming from
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in Guildford, U.K., both companies being
supplied in turn by subcontractors across much of the continent.
The complete satellites are then delivered to ESA’s ESTEC
technical center in Noordwijk, Netherlands, home to Europe’s largest satellite
test center.
There, a series of tests reproduces every aspect of the space
environment, including acoustic noise and thermal vacuum simulations, to ensure
their readiness for space.
Each satellite is also plugged into the entire worldwide
Galileo ground network for days on end to check it works as planned.
Their testing ended with a clean bill of health and they
received clearance to travel to French Guiana. Loaded onto trucks, they arrived
at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport later that day, taking off for French Guiana.
These two satellites are planned to be launched during last
week of March, following the European Commission's endorsement of the resumption
of Galileo launches.
McIlvaine Company
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel:
847-784-0012; Fax:
847-784-0061
E-mail:
editor@mcilvainecompany.com
Web site:
www.mcilvainecompany.com