Over the past three years, the EROSS Avionics Test Bench (ATB) has been built up step by step around a flight-representative computing unit. As each element of the rendezvous chain became available – cameras, lidar, thrusters and other actuators – their interfaces and simulation models were progressively integrated to create an increasingly realistic environment.
Until now, the bench sat close to the Engineering team in a dedicated office equipped for secure and rapid development. With the ATB reaching a new level of maturity, it has now been moved into Thales Alenia Space's industrial functional chain validation rooms, where it will be managed by the dedicated validation team. This transition marks an important milestone, bringing the ATB into a fully industrial process and paving the way towards the rigorous validation steps required to demonstrate flight-ready performance.
A further advantage is its proximity to Thales Alenia Space’s ROBY facility – a robotic simulator for rendezvous. Coupling the ATB with ROBY enables the validation team to command physical manoeuvres directly from the bench and complete higher-fidelity end-to-end verification activities.
Stay tuned for more insights from inside the EROSS SC development journey.
