Satellite fuelling

Last week the Sentinel-3C satellite has been successfully fuelled!

The satellite ready for fuelling:

The propellant handlers are checking the hydrazine drum:

The hydrazine drum is hung from a weight cell to accurately measure the propellant mass transferred to the satellite tank:

After filling the tank, it was pressurized to about 21 bars. In total 130kg of propellant (hydrazine) and 1.12kg of pressurant (helium) have been loaded.

After fuelling, the satellite was prepared before starting the “combined operations” with the launcher: flight items installation and non-flight items removal, MLI (Multi-Layer Insulation) finalisation, etc.

At the end of the week, the satellite has been mated on the VESPA+R upper part, more pictures to come soon!

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