ESA Science & Technology - Gaia Service Module ready to be lifted into the vacuum chamber of the SIMLES facility at Intespace Toulouse

Gaia Service Module (SVM) ready for thermal balance/thermal vacuum testing in the SIMLES chamber at Intespace Toulouse. The SVM is mounted on a tripod; the gantry on the left carries instrumentation cables to one of the interfaces on the base of the chamber. Underneath the SVM, the Phased Array Antenna (PAA) test heater and the bundle of test cables coming from the various temperature sensors, test heaters and from the PAA RF test ports can be seen. This large bundle of PAA cables is covered by Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) to control its temperature and can be seen on the picture as a silver cylinder going to the right and then through the bottom floor of the chamber. The main body of the chamber can be seen at the top of the picture.