For 20 years, ERI instructors have been helping spacecraft engineers measure, analyze and understand their liftoff and in-flight environments in terms of potential damage to on-board electronic and other equipment. And to use that understanding to develop more rugged products. And to implement appropriate environmental tests so that failures will occur in the lab, not in flight.
Climatic environmental tests? Mostly climatic chambers stressing spacecraft hardware with hot and cold temperature extremes, humidity, sunlight, salt spray.
Dynamic environmental tests? Our greatest emphasis has been on mechanical shocks from rocket ignition and stage separation, also in-flight random vibration and intense noise.
Don’t engineers study these subjects in college? Most such university instruction deals with mathematics and theory. Little if any instruction deals with the practical matters that many engineers need, and for which ERI is justly famous.
Here are outlines whose variations have been given on site at NASA facilities and to spacecraft manufacturers:
- CLI 501 – Climatic Environmental Testing
- COOL 508: Liquid Cooling for Electronics
- V&S 518 – Space Vehicle Vibration and Shock Testing, Measurement, Analysis and Calibration also HALT, ESS and HASS