Spacecraft Assembly

Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Testing

August 29, 2008

From August 21 to August 25, the LRO team rehearsed the first five days of the mission. During this test, we operated the Orbiter as if it were in space, with the control team at the Mission Operations Center and the engineering team in the Launch Support Room. At the Orbiter, we had an operator who acted as the ground station. The test team occasionally introduced simulated anomalies for the flight operations team to handle, allowing them to practice their quick response and decision making during hazardous situations. Overall, the test went well, with the entire team learning quite a bit about the technical and logistical details of getting into orbit around the moon.

The LRO team has completed the Orbiter functional and all other planned testing between vibration and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) testing. The Orbiter is now in the EMI chamber, and we have started testing there.

Here is LRO in the EMI chamber. We have transparent bagging material over the instruments to keep them clean. The walls of the chamber are metal, blocking radio signals from entering or leaving the room. During the testing, we will transmit from all antennas on the Orbiter, verifying that the spacecraft doesn't interfere with itself (we normally have hats over the antennas). We will also blast the Orbiter with radio signals to simulate the signals we will see at the launch site, and we will measure signals emanating from the spacecraft to make sure we don't interfere with the launch vehicle.


October 16, 2008

The EMI testing went well last month. We demonstrated that the spacecraft can transmit and receive radio signals without causing any interference to the instruments, and no signals from the launch vehicle will cause any problems with LRO systems. Since that time, we have loaded some new software, run through our functional, verified all our safing sequences, and cleaned up various odds and ends. The Orbiter is finally ready for the last of the environmental tests - thermal vacuum. Today we moved the Orbiter into the chamber. We still have a lot of preparation work before we can start the test.

Here is the Orbiter, with the Z-axis down (its nominal attitude while in orbit around the moon) just before the team lowered it into the thermal vacuum chamber. On the side of the protective bag, you can see the words "Mahina Hakilo", since LRO will observe the moon. (Our deputy project manager comes from Hawaii.)

The Orbiter looks pretty small as it is lowered into the large thermal vacuum chamber.

  Environmental Testing | Thermal Vacuum Testing