Extreme space mission simulation

摘要

Temperature cycling for assessing the reliability of industrial and commercial products almost pales into insignificance when compared to the hostility of an environment characterised by near vacuum and huge temperature swings - space! Most of the world's existing environmental chambers that are big enough and technically advanced enough to simulate such a cosmic environment are located in the USA - to support the NASA space missions - but now a new facility has been built at a test centre in Toulouse to support, amongst other things, the European Space Agency and its missions.