Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has successfully completed a system-level thermal vacuum test on the Israeli-French Venµs satellite. This test verified that the satellite, its subsystems and interfaces operate well under the extreme hot and cold temperatures encountered in a space environment.
Prior to the thermal vacuum test, IAI also completed satellite-level vibration and acoustic tests demonstrating that the Venµs satellite will be able to cope with the conditions it will experience during launch.
Venµs (Vegetation and Environment Monitoring New Micro-Satellite) is an earth-observation micro-satellite designed jointly by the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES). Venµs has two missions: one scientific and one technological. The scientific mission will monitor the earth’s vegetation using a camera with 12 narrow spectral bands; the technological mission will demonstrate the operation of an innovative electrical propulsion system based on the Israeli Hall Effect Thrusters.
Venµs is planned to be launched in summer 2017 using an Arianespace Vega launcher from Kourou, French Guiana. Weighing 265kg at launch it will be inserted into a near polar sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 720km with a two-day revisit time.
Click here for a video of the thermal vacuum testing.
Edited by Michael Jones
February 15, 2017
