{"id":221943,"date":"2014-11-06T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"5d03ad07c89f140c4926647d77cabc9a"},"modified":"2014-11-06T11:54:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T15:54:00","slug":"installing-hydra-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=221943","title":{"rendered":"Installing Hydra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2014\/11\/installing_hydra\/15024423-1-eng-GB\/Installing_Hydra_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThe Hydra \u2013 short for Hydraulic Multi-axis Shaker \u2013 at ESA\u2019s technology centre simulates the extreme vibration of the first few minutes of a rocket launch, to ensure that satellites and their component parts will not be shaken to pieces during their actual flight to orbit.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIt was installed at the test facility in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, some 18 years ago. Here is a rare glimpse of the hydraulic actuators that move the 18-tonne shaker table, which is also seen sitting on the floor behind, ready to be lowered into place.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThese actuators move the table in a similar fashion to an aircraft flight simulator, its motion overseen by a network of 36 parallel computers. The entire installation is braced by shock absorbers to prevent the resulting earthquake-strength vibrations spreading through the rest of the Test Centre.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nHydra has served many of Europe\u2019s largest space missions, including Envisat \u2013 at eight tonnes the largest-ever civil Earth observation satellite \u2013 Herschel and the Automated Transfer Vehicle, which weighed 22 tonnes at launch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2014\/11\/installing_hydra\/15024423-1-eng-GB\/Installing_Hydra_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"96\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThe Hydra \u2013 short for Hydraulic Multi-axis Shaker \u2013 at ESA\u2019s technology centre simulates the extreme vibration of the first few minutes of a rocket launch, to ensure that satellites and their component parts will not be shaken to pieces during their actual flight to orbit.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIt was installed at the test facility in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, some 18 years ago. Here is a rare glimpse of the hydraulic actuators that move the 18-tonne shaker table, which is also seen sitting on the floor behind, ready to be lowered into place.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThese actuators move the table in a similar fashion to an aircraft flight simulator, its motion overseen by a network of 36 parallel computers. The entire installation is braced by shock absorbers to prevent the resulting earthquake-strength vibrations spreading through the rest of the Test Centre.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nHydra has served many of Europe\u2019s largest space missions, including Envisat \u2013 at eight tonnes the largest-ever civil Earth observation satellite \u2013 Herschel and the Automated Transfer Vehicle, which weighed 22 tonnes at launch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}