The cavernous chamber of the Large Space Simulator
The Large Space Simulator (LSS), located at ESA’s Test Centre in the Netherlands, is Europe’s largest vacuum chamber. It is used for the testing of spacecraft in a space-like environment, including vacuum and extreme temperatures, before they fly into orbit.
The facility is complex, and the current process of training a new operator is lengthy and complicated. To make it easier, the space simulator now has a digital twin – the most realistic virtual model of the facility yet, developed for the European Space Agency (ESA) by the Spanish engineering company Empresarios Agrupados.
[Image description: This photo shows a large testing facility chamber. A person wearing a light blue lab coat and brown trousers stands in the centre of the chamber and appears very small in comparison to it, emphasizing the vast scale of the facility. The walls are lined with reflective, silvery metallic insulation material.]
