Solar Orbiter Electrical Test Bench (ETB) – Flatsat

Solar Orbiter is intended to brave the fierce heat and carry its telescopes to nearly one quarter of the Earth's distance from the Sun, where sunlight will be thirteen times more intense than satellites in the vicinity of the Earth feel it. The spacecraft must also endure powerful bursts of atomic particles from explosions in the solar atmosphere.
The reward will come in the form of sharp images obtained together with unprecedented measurements of the local near-Sun phenomena. The launch is foreseen in 2018.

The Satellite Electrical Test Bench (ETB) is an incremental test bench designed to perform the avionic qualification and system performance verifications. It is composed of numerical simulators completed as one goes along with electronic models (EM).

Three main steps of integration are foreseen. In the first two, the ETB can be considered as an avionics test bench. On the last step, payload units are integrated so that the ETB can be considered as a “flat-sat” electrical model (EM).

Objectives:

• Procurement, manufacturing, assembly and test of the harness to instrument and power SCOEs
• Procurement, manufacturing, assembly and test of satellite on-board harness, including communications as SpaceWire and MIL-1553 bus
• Manufacturing of the ETB test tables mechanical structure
• On-site installation and validation.

Clemessy ’s performances:

• Overall management and responsibility
• Product Assurance
• Hardware specifications
• Hardware manufacturing and integration
• Factory and site validation
• Warranty

Some figures:

• 56 cables SpaceWire (up to 6m)
• 4 MIL-STD-1553B bus (up to 6m)
• 14 MIL-STD-1553B cables (3m)
• 13,5 km wire (excluding SpaceWire and MIL-STD-1553)
• 7 tables (1x2m)
• 3 shelves
• 12 instrument simulators
• 12 instrument plates
• 1 400 connectors