Campaign activities - note #1

ESA and ASTRIUM core teams are now well set up in the MIK. Our offices are on 2nd floor (Russians consider ground floor as 1st floor)
Additional offices for support staff (ESA, ASTRIM, Thales Alenia Space, CNES) are available on the 3rd floor.

Clean room (3 rooms in fact: Spacecraft room, Check out room and support room) where integration and test activities take place is on the 1st floor.

Picture of the ESA core teaml office


Official flag of the campaign on display in the corridor


Check out room and support room (into the cleanroom)


The team leaves Hotel Sputnik at 8:00 am with the bus and starts with a Daily debriefing at 9:00 at the MIK. Bus returns to the hotel at 18:00 unless longer days are needed to complete activities.

Preliminary Remark: Within the frame of this blog, it is only intended to report info of general (and not technical) interest for a broad range of readers. A kind of Cryosat-2 for dummies... Therefore, these notes are certainly not exhaustive but just give a flavor of the scope of things the launch campaign team is busy with.

As it was said in a previous message, (See unpacking), the Solar Array (SA) had to be inspected separately after the protection panels have been removed. SAs are obviously fragile items due to the glass covering the solar cells.
As shown on the short movie below, the Spacecraft was rotated in order to position SAs in specific position where a visual inspection can easily be performed. This rotation gives a good opportunity to look the spacecraft as it will almost look like during flight. After the inspection SA protection covers will be put in place again to prevent any risk of damage during the following activities.



A nice picture of the Spacecraft (SC) in front of the Electrical Ground Segment Equipment (EGSE)
These racks are used for testing and monitoring the SC.


Other activities week worthwhile to mention this week:
-Battery charging
-Thermal protection of the top of the "dog house" permanently installed
-Preparing for a Spacecraft functional test (to make sure that all units work well)
-Checking some Electrical Ground Segment Equipment (EGSE)
-Preparing for On Board Software (OBSW) uploading
-Mounting the absorber wall for further testing of the radar altimeter (SIRAL-2)

In parallel, Rosscosmos has moved the Space Head Module (SHM) next to the spacecraft and started to prepare it for further integration. Cryosat-2 will be encapsulated later in the SHM.

Cryosat-2 ESA ASTRIUM launch campaign core team front of the Spacecraft on 16/01/2010