A spectacular journey to Moscow
On December 2nd, a huge ACS Thermal Vacuum Chamber reached the Moscow area after a spectacular journey, which led it to sail by river in front of the Kremlin.
The chamber vessel, having dimensions of about 10 m in diameter by 15 m in length, was divided in 5 segments and shipped by sea from Italy to Rostov on Don together with all the other materials. From Rostov the vessel segments were transported by river (see the picture below) to Bessedy, a village at 1,5 Km from Moscow and here taken by a convoy of trucks to Shchelkovo – at the AIT Center of Gazprom Space System - by special transports at night.
Click here for the Youtube Video of the shipment by truck.
The construction of Gazprom spacecraft Assembly Integration and Test Center in Shchelkovo started on the 25th of November 2019.
In the News published on that day in their website, they wrote: “The first ever fully integrated enterprise in the history of modern Russia for spacecraft assembly, integration and tests will be situated near the Telecommunications Center of Gazprom Space Systems. There will be produced modern world-class spacecrafts, being dedicated to civil applications for Gazprom Group companies as well as for other customers including the Roscosmos State Space Corporation. This will help, inter alia, to expand the Yamal satellite communication orbital constellation and the Earth observation satellite system – Smotr. AIT Facility sites will be supplied with state-of-the-art and highly automated equipment. All products will undergo multistage checking procedures, with unique test benches providing simulations of space exposure and forces occurred during rocket vehicle launches."
Since the beginning it was clear that a decisive role in this project would have been assigned to the Thermal Vacuum Chamber aiming at performing the Thermal Vacuum Tests and Thermal Balance Tests needed to qualify a satellite with respect to the extreme space environmental conditions.
In partnership with Thales Alenia Space, General Contractor for the supply and assembly of the whole facility, Gazprom Space System selected Angelantoni Test Technologies as supplier for such a strategic equipment that will contribute to the success of their future projects.
