3.3. De-risking plan at Cryogenic Temperatures for PETERCEM microswitch
Speaker: Manuel Sánchez; Alter Technology
The challenge of Space business increases from one year to another due to the increasing complexity of the mission objectives and the instruments involved. As a result of this, high stringent environmental requirements are arising more often.
Following this trend, ESA’s ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, ESA Cosmic Vision M4) science mission includes a Cold Payload Module (PLM), which comprises some instruments working at extreme low temperatures around 40K. M2 Mechanism (M2M), a positioning mechanism manufactured by SENER, is one of these instruments. It allows an accurate motion/adjustment of the secondary mirror of the ARIEL telescope in order to compensate the optical alignment of the telescope. The subsystem includes the pointing mechanism (M2M) and the telescope control unit (TCU) joined by the harness.
In particular, it is of interest the case of the M2M Harness operating at different temperature ranges (cryogenic, ambient and a transition temperature from cryogenic to ambient), where a microswitch manufactured by PETERCEM (FR) has been selected to know the status of the mechanism at cryogenic temperature values.
This part, previously ESCC QPL in the past, has been introduced as an alternative to Honeywell microswitch for Space, which currently has a long lead time (more than 40 weeks). On the other hand, it is still to be proven that the part manufactured by PETERCEM is able to withstand cryogenic temperatures.
For this reason, a de-risking plan, consisting of a functional verification at 40K, has been proposed by ALTER with review and agreement of SENER and ESA in order to test some samples and get some de-risking results that should give some confidence before submitting this part to a proper qualification according to the missions’ requirements. The di-risking test results should confirm that the Petercem microswitch is a valuable alternative to Honeywell microswitch.
Components:
- INTERCONNECT - MICROSWITCHES
Topics:
- MEASUREMENT & TEST
- QUALITY & RELIABILITY
Manuel Sánchez and Juan Barbero with Alter Technology
Léo Farhat with ESA ESTEC