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National Technical Tests NASA Lunar Satellite

National Technical Systems Inc. has conducted tests at its Santa Clarita facility on a NASA satellite set to launch this year to study the moon, the company announced Wednesday. Engineers with the Calabasas engineering firm worked with NASA personnel to simulate conditions the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer will experience at launch and on its mission. Testing of the satellite is critical because of the expense of building it, said Zion Young, a NASA representative working on the project. The mission has a reported cost of $100 million. “We try to anticipate all of the mechanical environments that the spacecraft will experience during launch and flight. We then test the spacecraft by simulating these extreme environments using specialized equipment,” Young said in a prepared statement. The satellite will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the moon’s surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. The craft will launch in late summer. Testing also was done at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View.

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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