Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has successfully completed a system-level thermal vacuum test on the Israeli-French VENµS (pronounced: Ven micro S) satellite. This test verified that the satellite, its subsystems and interfaces operate well under the extreme hot and cold temperatures encountered in a space environment.
Prior to the thermal vacuum test, IAI also completed satellite-level vibration and acoustic tests demonstrating that the VENµS satellite will be able to cope with the conditions it will experience during launch. VENµS (Vegetation and Environment Monitoring New Micro-Satellite) is an earth-observation micro-satellite designed jointly by the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES). VENµS has two missions: one scientific and one technological.
The scientific mission will monitor the earth’s vegetation using a Super Spectral Camera which comprises a catadioptric optical system, a focal plane assembly with narrow band filters, and 4 detector units with 3 separate CCD-TDI array. Each array with separate operational and thermal control.
The satellite is also equipped with a Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a focal length of 1.75m and a diameter of 0.25m. The telescope’s tube will be covered to protect it from pollution and dust which will deploy once in orbit.
Some of the objectives from the scientific mission are: Monitoring and analyzing surface under various environmental and human factors; develop and validating various ecosystem functioning models; improving and validating global carbon cycle models; defining theoretical and practical methods for scale transfer; and collecting and analyzing data collected by the low spatial resolution sensors.
The technological mission will demonstrate the operation of an innovative electrical propulsion system based on the Israeli Hall Effect Thrusters. The mission’s technological tasks include: orbit maintenance; LEO to LEO orbit transfer; and enabling imaging mission in a high drag environment.
The mission dates back to April 12, 2005, when a memorandum of understanding was signed between the ISA and CNES. The satellite was planned to be launched in 2008; but due to severe delays the launch date has been pushed to the summer of 2017, using an Arianespace Vega launcher from Kourou, French Guiana.
Weighing 265 kg at launch it will be inserted into a near polar sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 447 miles with a two-day revisit time.
The satellite will be ground controlled by IAI in Israel which will be linked to two sub-stations in charge of each of the missions: the scientific mission will be operated from Toulouse Space Center, France, and the technology mission will be controlled from the Technological Mission Center, Rafael, Haifa, Israel.
“We are proud to be in the forefront of the space technology and take part In the VENµS scientific mission,” said IAI’s President and CEO Joseph Weiss. “The completion of this testing is another step towards the upcoming launch that will enable hundreds of scientists around the world to explore and investigate the earth’s natural resources.”