ESA’s Ariel mission milestone
The payload structural model has completed mechanical tests at the National Satellite Test Facility: a crucial step towards a mission that will study the atmospheres of around 1000 distant worlds. Huge congratulations to teams across the Ariel Space Mission consortium, with a special shoutout to our colleagues at RAL Space who led the payload’s assembly and testing here in the UK. With the payload design now proven to be structurally sound, the next step is assembling the engineering model – a fully representative version of the flight hardware, complete with electronics and subsystems.
Testing for take-off
After a period of 5 months integration at RAL Space, the structural model underwent a series of demanding tests at the UK’s National Satellite Test Facility (NSTF).
The first challenge was acoustic testing. The intense acoustic environment of a rocket launch can shake spacecraft to their core, and in the NSTF this environment is recreated using an array of powerful speakers and amplifiers.
Next came mass properties testing, a crucial step to understand the payload’s total mass, center of gravity, and moments of inertia with extremely high precision. These measurements tell engineers vital information about how the spacecraft will behave during launch and throughout its journey to orbit. For Ariel, that journey will take it 1.5 million kilometers from Earth to its operational home. Knowing the spacecraft’s “resistance” to rotation is essential for fine-tuning how it will be controlled once in space.
Finally, the payload faced the most violent phase:
Vibration Testing
Satellites and spacecraft must endure extreme vibrations during launch, and two large shaker systems designed by Team Corporation featuring two Data Physics LE-5022-3 electrodynamic shakers at the NSTF replicated these forces in three directions.
Passing these tests is a significant milestone for any mission. For the Ariel team, who had spent months painstakingly assembling the payload, seeing the structural model withstand these trials was a proud moment.