BepiColombo MPO in the LSS for its 'dry run'
Date: 13 September 2011
Satellite: BepiColombo
Depicts: Mercury Planetary Orbiter
Location: Test Centre, ESTEC
Copyright: ESA
The Structural and Thermal Model (STM) of the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) in the Large Space Simulator (LSS) at ESA's Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, ready for a 'dry run' on 13 September in preparation for thermal-balance testing.
Some of the 121 hexagonal mirror segments that direct the simulated solar radiation onto the spacecraft are visible towards the top right of the image. The aperture through which the 'sunlight' travels from the nineteen 25-kW lamps that produce it can be seen just to the left of the mirror segments.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
