TV[*], software for Lockheed´s thermal-vacuum testing system

At Lockheed, thermal-vacuum testing is used to subject flight hardware to a controlled deep space environment to ensure successful operations after launch. Test items range from small electronic subsystems to large arrays of solar panels amd the assembled spacecraft. This paper describes a data acquisition and control system for thermal-vacuum testing that will support both small short duration tests and large scale tests that include thousands of measurement transducers, collected continuously for months at a time while controlling the thermal environment using over a hundred heat sources. TV[*] is specifically designed with features to support large scale thermal-vacuum testing. It approaches the scaling problem from the high end of the spectrum with an architecture and features designed to support large scale testing that will scale down efficiently to support small and medium scale testing