SILEX final ground testing and in-flight performances assessment

SILEX (Semi-Conductor Inter-satellite Link EXperiment) consists of one optical terminal on-board the French LEO observation satellite SPOT 4, and another on-board the European GEO telecommunication satellite ARTEMIS. While the first part of the SILEX verification plan had been oriented towards verification at equipment and subsystem levels, the final stages have mainly been devoted to terminal and system (terminals coupling effects) verification. During this final stage, a thermal vacuum test was conducted in a class 100-cleanliness environment with optical ground support equipment of outstanding performances. The obtained tests results, used to determine software compensations and verify optical and static pointing performances, have been entered into overall system simulation models to finalize flight performances budgets. In addition, systems tests were performed on each terminal with respective partner simulator to validate system simulation models and assess link performances and robustness and to verify communication bit error rate.