Measurement and stability of the pointing of the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter under thermal load
Abstract
The first European laser altimeter, designed for interplanetary flight, BELA, (on BepiColombo mission to Mercury) will be launched in July 2016. This abstract describes the setup used to characterize the angular movements of BELA during the simulation of the environment that the instrument will encounter when orbiting Mercury. Tests performed using the Engineering Qualification Model (EQM) show that the setup is accurate enough to characterize angular movements of the instrument components with an accuracy of ≈ 10 μrad.
- Publication:
-
European Planetary Science Congress
- Pub Date:
- April 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014EPSC....9...66G