It is time to look at France in our tour of contributions towards the European Service Modules. Part of Safran Filtration Systems based in Nexon in the centre of France, just under employees make industry-standard filters for aircraft cabins, engines and spaceflight. In the space industry EGSE is a well-known acronym encompassing all electric hardware used on Earth to build, test and prepare a spacecraft before its launch. Ariane Group has already featured in this blog series for its work on the fuel tanks made in Bremen, Germany.
Able to withstand a whopping bar of pressure but only weighing 81 kg when empty, these tanks proved themselves trucking supplies to the International Space Station. Made from carbon fibre the tanks are easily recognisable as they are ball-shaped and not cylindrical. The avionics, or the European Service Module brain, needs to process, analyse, and react to thousands of inputs during spaceflight ranging from temperatures, position in space, fuel levels, direction of travel, kinetic forces, sunlight and more.
The avionics takes all these inputs as well as commands from ground or the astronauts in the Crew Module and translates them into warnings, executes commands and reports back β thousands of times a minute. To do this, Airbus in Les Mureaux built a Orion spacecraft in software and key stand-in components where all aspects of a spaceflight mission are simulated. They specialise in cabling and electrical wire harness for aircraft avionics. Over 11 km of cables transmit information and power throughout the European Service Modules, painstakingly laid and connected following precise diagrams.
Latelec takes care of both types of cabling β power and data β and supplies the European Service Module flight harness and lab harness used for testing on ground. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Automated Transfer Vehicle page. ATV blog archive. NASA Orion page.
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