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This Gargantuan Lab Simulates Blasting Satellites Into Space
If you spend millions of dollars developing a satellite, you need to know it can handle the rigors of hurtling around the Earth at 17,000 mph. The UK's National Satellite Test Facility is here to help.
“The industry said they needed a one-stop-shop where they can do all of their testing for their large complex satellites in one place,” says Sarah Beardsley, the director of the UK government-funded Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Space, which runs the new facility based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. It is so large that the immense door needed to close the chamber, constructed in Turkey and Italy before arriving in Britain by boat just days before lockdown in 2020, was at the size limit of what would fit on a UK motorway. A satellite’s antenna can then be focused onto a receiver in the room, to check that its beam can be directed from orbit back down to Earth, despite being hundreds or thousands of kilometers distant and traveling at immense speeds.
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