What services does the Power Systems Laboratory offer?
Although tasks requested for ESA projects are generally given priority the Power Systems Laboratory does provide services for other European space programmes and companies, including SMEs (although not in competition with commercial laboratories) that meet the criteria described below.
A candidate customer can request a quotation to perform a test by contacting Laboratory manager Carla Signorini (contact details below). To qualify, the candidate customer (or end customer they are acting for) must be a person or body under the jurisdiction of an ESA Member State. The project in question must correspond to standard ESA Directorate of Technical and Quality Management research and development – space oriented work such as equipment testing –and must have a peaceful purpose.
The Power System Laboratory provides the following services:
- Independent and impartial evaluation of power electronic circuit designs for future space missions.
- Investigation of power related anomalies experienced within Agency and European space industry projects.
- Surge testing of critical power supply components, such as non-polarised capacitors, electrolytic capacitors, power MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors), fuses etc.
- Novel power supply topology validations in support of new power conversion techniques.
- High voltage technology expertise, in particular:
- High voltage, vacuum, partial discharge testing
- Unique EPC (electric power converter) test bench
- Partial pressure testing, outgassing and corona
- Characterisation of industry-produced hardware
- Evaluation of new technologies (life-testing, de-rating)
- Breadboarding of new ideas
Contact
Carla Signorini, Carla.Signorini @ esa.int
