LaRa team beside thermal vacuum chamber

ESA’s Lander Radioscience experiment, or LaRa for short, nearly two weeks inside a thermal vacuum chamber in ESA's Mechanical Systems Laboratory to perform functional testing in hot and cold conditions. It was at first placed in high vacuum to ‘degas’ fumes that might otherwise pose problems in space and to test its behaviour in conditions similar to that of the voyage to Mars. LaRa was then subjected to simulated Martian conditions, with 6 millibars of carbon dioxide added to the chamber, at the same time as the temperature was cycled up and down. A carbon dioxide was therefore in place to the right of the thermal vacuum chamber.