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Launching Ideas Video
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Services

Some of the extensive and complex services facilities within APL are available to the industry on an as-available basis, including:

Environmental Testing

  • The Environmental Testing Facility provides laboratories, instrumentation, and data acquisition capabilities for thorough thermal and dynamic environmental testing of flight hardware at all levels of assembly.
  • The Vibration Test Laboratory encompasses all necessary services and equipment to perform shock and vibration testing of spacecraft and subsystems. General mechanical tests such as weighing, static load testing, deployment testing, center-of-gravity and moment-of-inertia measurements, spin balancing, and modal analysis are also done at this laboratory. This laboratory is a Class 100,000 clean area.
  • The Space Simulation Laboratory provides all necessary services and equipment to perform thermal and thermal-vacuum testing of spacecraft, subsystems and instruments. When testing, this facility is operated continuously, 24 hours per day, under close monitoring by test operators. This laboratory is also considered a Class 100,000 clean area. A portable clean test area (Class 1,000) is available as well.

Mission Operations and Spacecraft Communications

  • Spacecraft communications assets at APL include three independent operational antenna systems. These mid-latitude stations can be configured to support a wide variety of missions ranging from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) through Deep Space, with a variety of data formats, including TDM, SGLS, and CCSDS. Current capabilities include support for L-band, S-band, and X-band communications.
  • Recent system improvements and technology enhancements enable these systems to provide future customers with advanced capability at competitive prices. The new paradigm of "Shared Services, Multi-Mission Ground Systems" makes the remote scheduling and data transfer capabilities of these systems highly attractive for commercial operations on a non-exclusive basis. While these systems are conducting routine daily contacts, their availability for additional contacts is still over 80 percent.