Thermal vacuum testing of the mars surveyor program and stardust spacecraft

摘要

Following the success of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) in Denver, CO was awarded two more contracts by NASA to produce spacecraft under the faster, better, cheaper initiative. The first contract, the Mars Surveyor Program (MSP), includes two vehicles, an orbiter and a lander. The Orbiter will launch on December 10, 1998 and move in to orbit around Mars on September 23, 1999. The lander will launch on January 3, 1999 and land on the Martian surface on December 3, 1999. The second contract, Stardust, is the space mission that will fly close to a comet and, for the first time ever, bring cometary material back to Earth for analysis. In support of these two programs, four system level thermal vacuum tests were performed in 1998, three for MSP and one for Stardust. The MSP Orbiter was tested in LMA's 8.8M X 19.8 m (29' x 65') solar thermal vacuum chamber. The MSP Lander was tested in two configurations. The Lander was tested in its cruis configuration in LMA's 8.8m x 19.8 m(29' x 65') solar thermal vacuum chamber. The landed configuration was performed in LMA's 5.5m x 6.1 m (18' x 20'_ thermal vacuum chamber. The Stardust spaceraft will undergo one test in LMA's 5.5m x 6.1m (18' x 20') thermal vacuum chamber.