Welcome back to a sunny (and very humid) Kourou.

Since the last chapter of this MTG-I1 blog, covering the arrival of our precious cargo in Kourou and removal of the satellite from its container in the S5 North facilities clean room, things have moved on rapidly.

Lifting of the satellite from the transport dolly to turnover trolley (Credits: ESA)

The satellite was lifted from the transport dolly and mounted onto the turnover trolley, which allows the satellite to be manipulated from horizontal to vertical and rotated around its central axis, to ensure the appropriate access for Assembly, Integration and Testing (AIT) activities.

In parallel, all the Electrical Ground Equipment has been installed and connected to the satellite as required. So far everything is working well, but we do have back-up equipment, should we suffer a problem.

It was a great relief when the satellite was successfully switched on and the formal standalone test campaign could begin with the first checkout activities focused on the satellite RF equipment, including the S-Band transponders, Ka Band and Payload Data distribution functionality and the DCS and GEOSAR. All tests were completed successfully, as planned, ensuring that a very happy Alfonso Camacho, ESA Communications System responsible, can return to Europe this week, safe in the knowledge of a job well done.

MTG-I1 safely attached to the turnover trolley and readied for testing (Credits: ESA)

This week, the focus is moving to the instrument functional testing with the critical release of the Flexible Combined Imager scanner, prior to functional testing, and the Optical checkout of the Lightning Imager. For these activities we have been joined by the (in)famous Donny Aminou, who is the overall ESA Payload Manager and veteran of MTG and MSG Programmes.

At the end of last week we said ‘au revoir’ to several members of the ESA team, who had successfully ensured the smooth facilities checkout,  transfer of the satellite from the boat to the S5 facility, and implementation of the propulsion leak tests, prior to removing the satellite from the container (with a little help from Thales Alenia Space team!). So I would like to thank James Champion, Martin Peccia. supported by his TEC cleanliness team, Elaine Pereira and Christoph Goetz for their good work, which has ensured a solid foundation for the rest of the campaign.

I am very pleased to say that Raffa Carli and Francesco Cainero have stayed on a bit longer to ensure continuity of activities, and maintain a close scrutiny on the industrial activities. Furthermore, Karolina and Giulia, who flew in as part of the ‘relief team’,  have stepped into the gaps left by Martin and Elaine seamlessly.

In addition, the legend, who is Shaf, our IT support, has also remained, ensuring that we have a more reliable IT infrastructure than in Estec, and who is now branching out into the team catering side, ensuring coffee, breakfast and smoothies are available at the office to fuel the hungry ESA team. Sadly, Shaf will leave us at the end of the week, so Davey, his replacement who arrives on Wednesday, will have some serious shoes to fill!

On the social side the team spirit within the ESA and industrial teams is running high with multiple activities available during any free time, including jungle walks, boat trips to Devil’s Island and to see Red Ibis and many more. There is little chance to get bored!

Our intrepid team in search of the Red Ibis — and not the hotel! (Credits: ESA)

Over the weekend several members of the team tried out Clay Pigeon shooting with 12 Bore shotguns. There, Alfonso, our quiet unassuming RF man, demonstrated his ‘natural born killer’ instincts, by hitting his first three clays and claiming he had never fired a shotgun in his life!

Equally shocking was Manfred, our ‘Austrian hunter’ (and mechanisms expert), who hit a grand total of one Clay. He was last seen looking for an optician in down town Kourou!

Alfonso — the ‘Natural Born Killer’ (Credits: ESA)

A further shout out goes to Karolina, who didn’t hit much (but more than Manfred!), but looked seriously stylish in her shooting outfit.

Unfortunately with the temporary loss of Martin from Kourou, his Pop Up Pub, known as ‘Peccia’s Place’ also had to close, to be replaced by ‘Paul’s Pad’, which is rather more up market establishment, offering film nights and a great assortment of beverages! Also at the hotel there is stiff competition from ‘Raffs Gaff’, which has been trading longer, but tends to be used as an early evening meeting place.

Karolina brings the style (Credits: ESA)

With the return of Martin next week things could get feisty!

We will report on this and many other work-related aspects in the upcoming blogs.

 

Post from: Paul Blythe, ESA MTG Programme Manager

Read more about the Meteosat Third Generation mission.