BepiColombo on shaker

The complete BepiColombo stack – from bottom to top the Mercury Transfer Module, Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, its sunshield lowering into place – being prepared for testing on the QUAD Multishaker, the most powerful electrodynamic shaker at the ESTEC Test Centre. The QUAD multishaker can efficiently and safely test payloads with a mass of up to 10000kg in vertical direction thanks to a thrust of 640kN generated by four separate 160kN shakers.