Starting on 9th of March with the final assembly steps and finishing on 31st of March with the final calibrations and associated accuracy change evaluation, Lens R&D has completed a full ECSS-E-ST-10-03 environmental ESA qualification in a record pace.
Although the financial consequences of a listing in the Guiness Book of records prevents a formal registration of this record, we are sure that this is a record that will not be broken for some time (if ever).
As a team we would like to express our gratitude to the staff at the ESA ESTEC MSL laboratory and involved people at ISISpace for allowing us to set this record.
Ten years to the day after the formal start of our activities in the field of reliable Sunsensor development, we managed to complete this qualification. We are looking forward to completion of the first 500 thermal cycles which will be running until 20th of April and the subsequent calibrations and evaluations. The results of these evaluations are expected to confirm the successful qualification of our BiSon64-ET and BiSon64-ET-B Sunsensors to the full ESA standard.
As such this would be the first Sunsensors to be ESA qualified in more than a decade and there is no need to say that we worked very hard to get there, but are also very proud to be able to state this.