Summary of work underway at ESA test center

[flynn]

<b>High level of activity at the ESTEC Test Centre</b><br /><br /> <br />12 August 2005<br />The European Space Agency’s Test Centre has been very busy over the past few weeks, with two complete spacecraft and two major spacecraft modules in the facility undergoing a variety of tests.<br /> <br />ESA maintains a large centre for the testing of space vehicles and their subsystems at its European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), located at Noordwijk in The Netherlands. The ESTEC Test Centre has the capability of simulating the conditions that large spacecraft will experience during launch and once they are in space. <br />During the spring and early summer of 2005, the ESTEC Test centre has been particularly busy, with four major projects preparing or running test campaigns simultaneously. <br /><br />http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMIUV808BE_index_0.html<br /><br />A good read, ESA have a very good Earth Observation fleet of satelites including the massive Envisat. They can probably rival NASA with their fleet of Earth observation science satelites. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#800080">"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring" - <strong>Chuck Palahniuk</strong>.</font> </div>