DEVELOPMENT AND QUALIFICATION OF AN INFRARED CAMERA SYSTEM FOR THERMO-GRAPHIC APPLICATIONS IN TV-TB CONDITIONS

摘要

The Test Centre Division of the Directorate of Technical and Quality Management at ESAESTEC has developed an Infrared Camera System which has been used for thermal measurements during the test campaigns of the Qualification Model (QM) of the Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics (GAIA) Deployable Sunshield Assembly (DSA) and is also planned for the Structural Thermal Model (STM) and Proto-Flight Model (PFM) of the BepiColombo spacecraft in the ESTEC Large Space simulator (LSS). The paper reports on the development activities and on the results of the qualification tests for an infrared camera system which is designed to operate in thermal-vacuum conditions. The qualification tests were carried out during the 2nd quarter of 2009 in the ESTEC LSS and have confirmed the achievement of the required performance for thermal imaging of satellites inside a large thermal-vacuum chamber, during Thermal-Vacuum/Thermal-Balance (TV-TB) testing and including the operation of a sun simulator.