Northern Light hardware and instrumentation is being validated for space flight at York University?s new Space-Test Facility, which is equipped with a full suite of validation equipment, enabling a rapid test cycling and a quick turnaround response to design changes.

Supported by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Ontario Research Fund (ORF), these enhancements enable the end-to-end development, test, and validation of space hardware.

Vibration Test (Shake)
The vibration-test module comprises a 40 kW vibrator that can deliver the force equivalent vibration load of space launch by a chemical rocket.

The module is designed to accommodate hardware of up to 1 m3 within a custom constructed room that provides physical isolation and soundproofing during test runs. The system is able to vibrate 100 kg loads at 10g in random or sinusoidal modes from 10 3000 Hz in one axis. Other axes are tested by means of a test fitting that provides three orthogonal mounts. Additionally, the system can deliver shock loads exceeding 100g. The system is instrumented with four accelerometer channels and operated via a computer and control electronics. A sinusoidal mode is employed to sweep across the anticipated frequency regime (10-3000 Hz) to conduct a model analysis and to identify instrument resonances. This test may be conducted first at low amplitude prior to other testing and in order to verify that there are no serious design flaws that could lead to instrument damage in subsequent testing. A random vibration mode is employed to verify instrument response under a generic launch condition and to determine mass properties.

The software includes a programmable vibration mode that can replay vibration sequences recorded during actual rocket flights in order to duplicate exactly vibration conditions and to verify launch-system compatibility. Tests are conducted cyclically with test instrumentation characterised between tests in order to measure structural relaxation and distortion. These tests result in the detection of both minor and serious structural design flaws and provide a basic data set with which to determine how well space hardware will survive launch.

Thermal Vacuum-Test (Bake)
The thermal vacuum chamber at York?s Space-Test Facility provides a means to test the Northern Light spacecraft and instruments under the environmental conditions experienced in space and on Mars.

During cruise to Mars, hardware experiences a hard vacuum and is subject to increased thermal loads from the Sun. The custom-built TVAC chamber at York University can simulate a vacuum environment below 10-6 torr and cycle temperatures between +140 oC and -140oC in order to induce thermal cycle loading analogous to that experienced by space hardware on Mars.

A horizontal 1.5 m diameter chamber has an access door for the installation of equipment. The system includes a 2 m platen that can roll partially out of the chamber for component loading and assembly. The chamber includes a large selection of ISO standard instrumentation ports designed for the system users. Users can easily install customized feeds to power and control instrumentation during test.