Summary of the Metop Payload Module TV Testing 2004-01-2305
The METOP satellite is Europe’s polar-orbiting meteorological satellite. It balances the US provided POES (Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite) program. 3 flight models are built under EUMETSAT/ESA contract by an industrial consortium led by Astrium. Instruments are supplied by NOAA and EUMETSAT.
This paper gives a summary on the thermal testing of METOP payload module. The testing started with TB test on EM, conducted in may 2001 at ESTEC Large Space Simulator. It was followed by a TV test on the same model in June 2001. The test was split into a TB part with solar simulation and a TV part without. Between both tests a test jig carrying a set of stimuli and test equipment was installed on the PLM.
In November 2002 the PLM flight model 1 was subjected to a TV test at ESTEC with additional TB phases to improve the TMM. In February 2004 PLM flight model 2 has executed also TV testing at ESTEC.
The test objectives, the test phases and the requirements for the test environment lead to a unique test setup with a test jig carrying different cold plates, heated plates and targets.
The main difference between both flight models is the IASI instrument, which was represented by a thermal dummy on FM1. Emphasis is given to FM2 TV test. The IASI passive cooler requires a He-cooled cold plate with temperatures <40K. Unfortunately the PLM orientation does not coincide with the required instrument orientation (due to a rotating corner cube mechanism), so a dedicated support frame was designed.
The test jig including cooling loops and the facility interfaces are discussed in detail. A short discussion on test phases and results follows, highlighting the differences between EM, FM1 and FM2 testing.
Finally lessons learnt for future testing of large satellites are outlined.
