During a short ceremony at Lens R&D in Noordwijk, the ownership of 6 BiSon64 sunsensors (intended for the breadboard of the first ESAIL satellite) was transferred to our customer Luxspace.
Handing over these sensors to the Deputy Managing Director of Luxspace Marino Poppé not only marked the first formal delivery of hardware to a customer who intends to use our sunsensors on board of their satellites, but also the beginning of a second phase of the qualification testing.
Where the bare diodes of the Bison 64 sunsensors have been tested to 10e16 1MeV electrons and 560krad(si) Co-60 gamma radiation, the final irradiation (planned for 19th of January) will start to show the capability to survive at least up to 1 Mrad(si) without issues.
Next to this the vibration qualification (which is currently at 6 periods of 20g random and 12 times a 1000 g shock as applied during the MIL-STD-883 TM2020B particle induced noise test) will be extended with 30g sine testing and 37.8 g random testing.
Decompression tests, thermal cycling (1000 cycles -45C..+85C) and thermal vacuum eclipse simulation testing will follow on this vibration qualification and should provide proof to other potential customers by the end of Q2/2015 that the Bison 64 sunsensors live up to their promise to provide extremely high reliability sun-sensing capabilities at an affordable price level.