Environmental testing of FUNcube satellite
Since Monday, July 18, members of AMSAT-UK have been performing temperature testing and thermo vac testing of the FUNcube amateur radio satellite.
The facilities to do this were very kindly offered by the Assembly, Integration and Verification (AIV) facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, at Harwell, near Oxford. AMSAT-UK are extremely grateful to them for their help and advice.
The boards tested were the Engineering Models (EMs) which are just about identical to those that will fly.
As of Wednesday, July 20, it had been determined that the stack operates down to a temp of minus 10 degs C and up to +60 degs C and survived storage at -30 and +70. These results were obtained by the use of a temperature controlled oven in air. On Tuesday, the stack was transferred to a thermo vacuum chamber for further testing.
AMSAT-UK is aiming to complete the thermo vac testing by Friday morning, leaving the rest of Friday to apply glue to the structure, and mount it in its ‘POD’ ready for vibration testing on Monday.
For more information on FUNcube see
http://www.FUNcube.org.uk/
Join the FUNcube Yahoo Group at
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube/
AMSAT-UK publishes a colour A4 newsletter, OSCAR News, which is full of Amateur Satellite information.
Join online at http://tinyurl.com/JoinAMSAT-UK
A sample edition of the newsletter can be seen at
http://www.uk.amsat.org/on_193_final.pdf
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