Sentinel-1A safe and sound

After arriving at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, the launch campaign have carried out their initial checks on the Sentinel-1A satellite.

Opening Sentinel-1A’s container after arriving in Kourou. (ESA–M. Shafiq)

After its long journey from Europe, Sentinel-1A and its container were left to stabilise for a while.

Removing Sentinel-1A from the shipment container. (ESA–M. Shafiq)

Several checks were made to ensure sure that the container’s ‘environmental conditions’ were okay. Once everything was confirmed to be ‘nominal’, the Sentinel-1A satellite was carefully removed and moved to the High Bay.

First look around Sentinel-1A after being taken out of its shipment container. (ESA–M. Shafiq)

Here, we started making it ready for testing. The first step is to put it onto a ‘multipurpose trolley’ and then switch the satellite on.

Svein Lokas, ESA’s Sentinel-1A Launch Campaign Manager, happy that the satellite has arrived in Kourou safely! (ESA–M. Shafiq)

Meanwhile the Thales Alenia Space team have been busy setting up the ‘electrical ground support equipment’, which allows us to carry out the electrical tests.

So far, so good!

Sentinel-1A safe and sound after its journey to Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. (ESA–M. Shafiq)

Post from Svein Lokas (ESA’s Sentinel-1A Launch Campaign Manager), French Guiana, 25 February 2014.