Payload Processing Facility acceptance and satellite arrival

Welcome back to another entry of our Launch Campaign blog!

The week started with welcoming the arrival of the second ‘early group’ team from both ESA and Thales Alenia Space, who arrived in French Guiana together. This also included our two ESA cleanliness specialists who joined us before the spacecraft arrived to run the cleanliness inspections, which are part of the Payload Processing Facility Acceptance process.

The cleanroom facilities had had a deep clean called the White Tornado. This is a real advantage for a satellite like MTG-I1 because of the sensitive nature of the optical instruments to help prevent any potential contamination.

The ESA cleanliness specialists, with support from Arianespace and CNES team members, the CNES cleaning team and participants from EUMETSAT and ESA project teams inspected the facility’s cleanrooms and carried out any additional cleaning as needed during the inspections.

The two ESA cleanliness specialists also set up a dedicated cleanliness monitoring station, in addition to the standard monitoring equipment provided by the facility.

All teams were extremely pleased with the exceptional cleanliness of the facility, thereby allowing MTG-I1 to enter its cleanest possible home for the next month.

On Tuesday the big day arrived, the MN Toucan vessel with its precious cargo stowed safely away approached Pariacabo – the Kourou harbour.

The MN Toucan cargo door was opened and the MTG-I1 container was finally visible in Kourou – an exciting and long-awaited moment which was met with several happy project members welcoming the arrival of our satellite.

The satellite was then transported to CSG and while it had rained earlier in the day and rain clouds were building again, the weather ended up being very favourable and the rain missed!

The project team was not so lucky. When returning to the hotel in the middle of the night after the work for the day had been completed, torrential jungle rain battered our cars during the short drive home.

MTG-I1 finally arrived in the processing facility’s airlock on Tuesday evening and welcomed by many project members, both within and outside the airlock.

The transportation companies and Thales Alenia Space had completed a major step towards launch – the MTG-I1 satellite was almost ready to be unpacked!

How do we maintain the airlock clean while keeping the big doors open to the jungle at night, might you ask? Thanks to the array of MTG-I1 additional cleanliness means that insect traps are in place, and along with very favourable weather conditions, our MTG-I1 weather satellite had a very smooth arrival. The airlock remained within nominal ISO 8 cleanroom conditions even with the door being open. Incredibly, the heavy tropical rain started just after the airlock door had been closed.

After the airlock was closed, the teams got busy preparing and cleaning the satellite container and the mechanical ground support equipment, which is needed to remove the satellite from its container and to set it on the satellite handling dolly. Other equipment will be very much in use during the coming weeks.

Thanks to the efforts of all parties, all items were moved into the high bay cleanroom the next day and finally the time came for MTG-I1 to be rolled out of its container.

We finally had eyes on the first of the six Meteosat Third Generation satellites in Kourou.

Looking at the transport recordings of temperature, humidity, shocks and sea swells, our satellite had had a very comfortable journey from Cannes in France to Kourou – well done to all involved in this long journey!

The Thales Alenia Space, ESA and Eumetsat MTG-I1 project teams celebrated this milestone with a welcome party for the satellite.

What’s next? The first satellite switch on and the global leak test.

Check back soon for some more updates from our Kourou launch base!

Post from: Martin G. Peccia, ESA MTG Product Assurance & Safety Manager

Read more about the Meteosat Third Generation mission.