ESA Qualification

ESCC EVALUATION AND QUALIFICATION OF AVIM® SINGLE POINT OPTICAL CONNECTORS (Contract No: PR-ESA-3-12750)

Diamond replied to a European Space Agency (ESA) Request for Quotation 3-12750/09/NL/PA and has proposed the tasks necessary to qualify the AVIM® optical fiber connector. The activity described in the proposal was based on the requirements of the ESA Statement of Work (SOW).

Project objectives:

The scope of the project is to evaluate the optical fiber connector market for space; propose a product that will be evaluated and then qualified for space application according to proposed ESCC standards during the project. Two connector sets were considered; the AVIM® and Mini AVIM® using a Polarization maintaining fiber and a PEEK loose tube.

Complications:

A connector set should be qualified, but during the project, a clear relation of performance with fiber and cable extended the project to add a complete assembly configuration to be qualified.

Project plan:

After a market and test study, an Evaluation Test Procedure (ETP) was proposed and implemented. Results were published and presented during the ICSO 2012 conference. A qualification test procedure was inferred from ETP and a qualification lot was produced and qualified. Results were published and presented during the ICSO 2014 conference

Expected main benefits:

By establishing standards for testing fiber optic passive assemblies composed of connector sets, fibers and cable, future applications increasing in the space area, will be easier, less costly than full blown qualification for each project and the knowledge based increased in this area for the European space community.

Status:

The project has been closed as of September 2013 and Qualification Test Report (QTR) for the AVIM® and Mini AVIM® are available (Diamond QTR 064 and QTR 065).

Variants of the Mini AVIM® assemblies have been qualified and figure in the ESCC QPL. They are described in the ESCC certificate 355-see links.