RAL Space and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have combined expertise to build a new national centre – the Small Satellite Cailbration Facility – for testing and calibration instruments on small, cube and nano satellites.
Supported by experts from both organisations, the Small Satellite Calibration Facility is based among RAL Space's existing facilities on Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, already a bustling campus of over 100 local and international space organisations,
This new facility is set to empower start-ups and SMEs by providing access to world-leading calibration services at short notice and a fraction of the cost. This initiative not only lowers the barrier to entry for aspiring space companies but also gives them a competitive edge through enhanced data quality and more reliable missions.
Space Calibration Cryostat – Vacuum environment
- Provides thermal vacuum environment for customer's instrument
- Bake at +75°C possible
- Thermally controlled breadboard
- Option to test in air and at room temperature
- Four 200mm diameter ports and two windows to view external calibration sources
Instrument motion control
- Rotation stage with hexapod to position device under test allowing optical axis alignment while under vacuum and selection of calibration sources
- Hexapod for fine positioning repeatability of 3.2 µrad in rotation, and 0.4 µm in displacement
- Rotation stage for source selection, repeatability 0.34 mrad.
- Motion possible over temperature range -20 ⁰C to +50 ⁰C
Collimator – Geometric characterisation
- Image projection system with different targets for geometric characterisation of customer instruments
- 200mm collimator system
- Vis/SWIR integrating sphere to illuminate object plane
- TIR Blackbody source operation from 0 to 125°C
- 0.5 to 20Hz chopper system
- Spare slot for future sources
- Targets for MTF, PSD, MRTD characterisation
Blackbody – TIR radiometric calibration
- Temperature range 210 to 320K
- ITS-90 traceable source radiance uncertainty to better than 0.1K
- 200mm aperture - provision to stop target down
- Based on ATSR/AATSR/SLSTR ground calibration targets - proven design and good performance
STARWELL – UV/SWIR Radiometric and spectral response
Building on the knowledge gained from the development of NPL’s STAR-cc-OGSE, the Small Satellite Calibration Facility utilises much of the same science & engineering to enable quick turnaround, affordable access to radiometric calibration of small satellite payload instruments.
The system combines the radiometric calibration setup from STAR-cc-OGSE with a novel SI-traceable reference detector and a 1 kHz pulsed OPO monochromatic source to perform a range of radiometric calibration measurements from 300 nm to 2500 nm.
Image credit: NPL
For enquiries about the facility, please contact: sscfenquiriesralnpl@stfc.ac.uk
