test – Vlad Petrescu

Last week was amazing! Who has the opportunity to do some tests for 10 days and work next to the employees at ESA and ETS? Well, we do!

Our team is proud to have ESA as a partner and we are very grateful for all the support that they provided us at ESTEC, Noordwijk. Our primary objective was to do a full vehicle test and operate it under vacuum conditions. We simulated the environment that the pod will encounter in the SpaceX tube, which is roughly 10mbars and 40deg C.

Since the battery cells don’t suffer vacuum, we need to protect them by maintaining an ambient pressure environment around them. We got all the useful data out, including the pressure in the battery box and the temperature of the different electronic components. This test helped us not only to validate the leak-proof of the case but also to understand how long can our electronics function without convection.

Now our pod is back to the workshop. It took us only a few hours to get it dirty again. Next time I go to ESA I will appreciate more the environment and the clean tools they have.