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Proba-2 completes Flight Acceptance Review
21 July 2008
The Proba-2 spacecraft has completed its Flight Acceptance Review, the third Agency-wide major review in its development cycle and the last major development hurdle prior to launch.
The Flight Acceptance Review (FAR) followed the completion of a test campaign comprising thermal-vacuum, vibration, acoustic and EMC testing of the flight model spacecraft. The one remaining shock test – done on the structural model rather than the flight unit, will be performed by the launcher authority – in this case Eurokot – in September. The FAR also reviewed the results of the installation and acceptance of the mission control centre in the ESA ground station at Redu, Belgium.
Successful completion of the FAR means that all the main components of the spacecraft have been built, tested and are compliant with their requirements, with only well scoped ‘open work’ items remaining to be completed before it is ready for launch. The FAR gave an in-depth review of the complete system at a point in its development that allows time for corrective actions to be taken without impacting the launch schedule, should any real concerns be identified by the external experts. These experts, who do not participate in the project on a day-to-day basis, may discover inherent problems overlooked by those more deeply involved.
On to the Flight Readiness Review
Aside from the shock testing, no additional open work items were identified by the FAR and the spacecraft will be ready for the final Flight Readiness Review (FRR), now scheduled for December – somewhat before the start of the launch campaign, now planned for late February 2009. There remain activities relating to the launcher interface data packages and procedures, which have not been finalised but are not considered critical. Also, some tasks related to finalisation of the operations preparation and to ensuring that the team is ready and trained for launch and operations of Proba-2 will be performed in the time between FAR and launch.
Proba-2 will be launched together with the ESA SMOS mission and clearly spacecraft and operations teams are anxious for a successful launch. We look forward to reporting good news about a year from now.
For more information click here.
Source: ESA
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