It’s been a year since ESA’s specialized laboratory for the study of high power RF moved to Spain. In the past 12 months has continued to play a crucial role in European space projects, performing over 100 tests for 19 test campaigns.
Much of this work has been directly related to ESA projects, for example in missions of Earth observation like Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-1-3, in the future ‘Earth Explorer’ Biomass, in Alphasat satellite telecommunications and in the Galileo navigation satellites.
On June 28, 2010 were inaugurated the new facility, and just three days later, the Laboratory was again fully operational. During the first year of operation, approximately 80% of the units failed during the first test campaign, and nearly 95% were certified success in the second attempt, which shows how effective the diagnosis is after the first failure. The ESA/VSC team has worked more than 4.000 hours supporting the European space industry. In addition, its work has allowed the publication of a large number of scientific articles.