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A newly refurbished clean room in the Chemistry Building has become the Department of Physics’ new Space Instrumentation Laboratory, providing a dedicated facility for the assembly, testing and inspection of space-flight hardware.

The lab has been developed to support ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ’s growing involvement in major international space missions, including HelioSwarm and Vigil, both of which are expected to enter key project phases from next year.  

The facility will primarily be used for the assembly of flight-model instrumentation, with around 80% of activities focused on hardware destined for space missions in-development. The remaining capacity will support operation of flight spare or qualification magnetometer instruments for missions that are currently in-flight including those of Solar Orbiter, Juice and IMAP.

One of the laboratory’s key new capabilities is a high-resolution 3Dmicroscope, which allows engineers and researchers to inspect components in far greater detail than was previously possible. The system can identify microscopic cracks and defects, while also providing detailed views of the shape and quality of solder joints. Detecting these issues early is particularly important for space hardware, where even very small faults can become costly failures once a mission is underway.  

The timing of the refurbishment is particularly important. ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ researchers are playing significant roles in both the European Space Agency’s Vigil mission, which will provide advanced warnings of space weather events, and NASA’s HelioSwarm mission, which will investigate the turbulent solar wind using a fleet of spacecraft.  

By providing a dedicated environment for flight hardware assembly and testing, the new lab will help ensure the Department is equipped to deliver cutting-edge instrumentation for these and future missions.  

Patrick Brown, Head of Magnetometer Lab, said "Securing the science leadership on HelioSwarm and Vigil missions means we needed the capability to build 10 flight instruments during the next two years while continuing to operate reference hardware models for our in-flight missions such as Solar Orbiter, Juice and IMAP. The new Space Instrumentation Laboratory provides the space to build and test the new flight models in the very clean conditions and magnetically quiet test environments required for space magnetometers. 

"We are most grateful to the huge efforts of Doug Hudson, Stuart Mangles and Paul Brown to make this new facility a reality"