20/01/18
2018 has kicked off and the EIRSAT-1 team are continuing to work on the actions assigned to us by the ESA experts during our Critical Design Review workshop in ESTEC in December. These actions are in response to areas in our documentation and in our design of the spacecraft that require clarification and extra work. Having submitted the responses to some of these actions this week, we have a second batch of longer-term actions to respond to, with our deadline approaching in the coming weeks.
The team met on Friday as usual to discuss the status of these actions and to identify any which require more work or more people to help out. An enormous amount of work has been put in so far and there are some areas which will require attention over the next few weeks. When these responses are submitted, the ESA expert reviews the work done and will either accept the actions taken or suggest other work be completed.
In the meantime, as we work on these actions, we must prepare for the next stage of the mission – building prototypes and testing them. We have been working on test plans, which define the environments, equipment and procedure of each test. The facilities needed for these tests, such as specialised thermal vacuum chambers and vibration testing facilities, must be researched now so that we are ready for the next stages. It is an exciting period of the mission as we approach the end of the Critical Design Review period. Stay tuned to our progress on Twitter, where we have also restarted the team biographies, so you can get a greater insight into the diverse range of people on this team and their backgrounds.