Creating Space, on Earth...

The usual engineering process of design, build, and test applies to a spacecraft the same as it applies to a car or aircraft.  However, unlike a car or an aircraft, testing the item you've built in a realistic and representative environment is a little bit more tricky, after all, to do such a test, we literally need to recreate Space here on Earth!

How do you create Space on Earth?

To do this we use something called a Thermal Vacuum chamber.  This device once the spacecraft is sealed inside of it, is first used to create a vacuum environment by evacuating all of the air from the chamber.  For our recent test, we "pumped down" the chamber to around 1x10-6mbar of pressure (recall that atmospheric pressure is 1bar, so this is an air pressure of 0.0000000001bar!) once this vacuum condition is reached, the chamber is cooled to a chilly -140deg using liquid nitrogen.  Prior to cooling the chamber, the spacecraft is powered on and the test team begin to activate the various heaters and monitor the temperatures of all the units to ensure they remain within their operating limits. 

The TVAC (Thermal Vacuum test) was the first test that LISA Pathfinder under went on arrival in Germany.

LPF Installed in the TVAC Chamber ahead of the test
Pictures are property of Airbus Defence and Space Ltd, reproduced here with permission

LPF fully installed in the TVAC chamber
Pictures are property of Airbus Defence and Space Ltd, reproduced here with permission

One final look before closing the door for the 8 day test
Pictures are property of Airbus Defence and Space Ltd, reproduced here with permission

The door is closed and Space Simulation can begin
Pictures are property of Airbus Defence and Space Ltd, reproduced here with permission

LPF is removed from the chamber 8 days later following the test, time for a Team photoshoot!
Pictures are property of Airbus Defence and Space Ltd, reproduced here with permission