SimEnOm thermal vacuum chamber

Goals of the facility

SimEnOm (Simulator of the Environment of Omega) has been developed for simulating the thermal vacuum environment of the OMEGA instrument of the MARS’96 mission and the MARS EXPRESS mission in order to calibrate the instrument.

The SimEnOm facility has as a goal to:

• Simulate and control the space environmental conditions of an instrument in flight, mainly in terms of vacuum and thermal properties;
• Allow to control the instrument during thermal vacuum

SimEnOm is located in a clean room of class 1000 or ISO 6 with 2 laminar flows of ISO 5. The setup has been conceptualized with the idea to reuse it for other projects, so with a certain degree of flexibility. It has ever since served for testing the following instruments:

• VIRTIS-H (ROSETTA & VENUS-EXPRESS) : all the models (STM, EQM, FM)
• CHEMCAM (Curiosity) : STM model
• VIHI-PE/Simbio-Sys sur BEPI-COLOMBO : all the models (STM, EQM, FM)
• MEXIC MF-A sur TARANIS : FM model (Octobre 2015)
• SUPERCAM Mast Unit / MARS2020 : STM model (April-Mai 2016)
• XGRE / TARANIS : FM model (June-July 2016)
• RPW / Solar Orbiter : complete calibration with MEB + PAs + SCM + harness regulated independently in T° (November-December 2016)
• SUPERCAM Mast Unit / MARS2020 : IR calibration of the EQM model (February - March 2018)
• ExoMars/RLS_ICEU unit : TVAC FM model (August 2018)
• SUPERCAM Mast Unit / MARS2020 : IR calibration of the FM model (May 2019)
• RPWI-SCM / JUICE : TVAC qualification campaigns (-180 / +70 °C) for STM, QM, PFM and FS models (nov. 2019 to feb. 2021)

Click on the images to enlarge

SimEnOm chamber closed

Photo Jérôme Parisot

VIRTIS-H instrument integrated in the SimEnOm chamber

Photo Jérôme Parisot - dec. 2003

SimEnOm with RPW instrument - FM of the Solar Orbiter mission

Photo Jérôme Parisot - nov. 2016

Integration of SuperCam Mast Unit instrument - FM2 in the SimEnOm chamber (Mars2020 mission)

Photo Jérôme Parisot - mai 2019

Description of the setup

The setup includes:

• A vertical cylindrical vacuum chamber build out of 2 almost equally sized parts:
  • The lower part contains the support and the essential of all the flange connections (pumping, cryogenics and electrical cables). It is supported by three pillars that span over a granite optical bench ;
  • The upper part forms a cover that can be moved vertically. It allows the passage of optical beams through a window (CaF2 and Sapphire available) ;
  • Another window (ZnSe) is dedicated for the use of a thermal camera ;
• A pump system (primary + secondary) including :
  • A dry primary pump, with a Roots stage, outside of the cleanroom ;
  • A turbomolecular pump mounted to the vacuum chamber
  • A liquid nitrogen reservoir at the exterior of the vacuum chamber which assures the cryogenic pumping
• A plate at the interior of the chamber founded on a granite optical bench of which the mechanical support is uncoupled from the vacuum chamber by 3 thermal isolated pillars. This system allows to assure a good mechanical stability, for example, when applying external optical stimuli placed on the optical bench ;
• A control/command system of the pumping and temperature regulations of the thermal sinks.
• A QCM (MK10) microbalance, used for the outgassing measurements during bake-outs campaigns.

The steering interface is programmed in LabVIEW. End of 2015 the setup has been renovated and completely automatized.

Technical characteristics