European Space Agency: Noordwijk

The European Space Agency has its biggest headquarters here in the Netherlands, just north of Leiden's closest beach, between Katwijk and Noordwijk. Through personal contacts, I was able to get access and a guided tour for myself and two friends. My inside man Pierre here tests the different parts of satellites before they are launched into space.

We started the tour in this visually-impressive electromagnetically-insulated room, used to test whether different parts of the satellites would interfere with each other. All four walls and ceiling were covered in foamy, spiky square pyramids coloured in either turquoise, blue or black. These are specially designed to absorb electromagnetic waves and thus simulate the infinity of space, where such waves would go on forever, and never bounce back towards the emitting object. It could have been a contemporary art exhibit, and of course, reminds me of countless sci-fi movies.

I was told that a week earlier, some Chinese "visitors" had also made a visit and taken a lot of photos of every aspect of the rooms. Perhaps in a few weeks, European technology and design will be seen replicated at the Chinese space programme.

The above room was a 20 metre high amplifier.

A vacuum chamber.

The Large Space Simulator was the most impressive jewel in the crown. It was a huge vacuum chamber, large enough to fit most satellites, combined with enough lighting capacity to simulate twice the amount of sun energy hitting the Earth (2 solar constants). There was a collection of around 60 xenon lightbulbs, each with a capacity of 25 Kw. Thus it could mimic the effect of sunlight hitting a satellite without the protection of the Earth's atmosphere.

More scientific info: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Space_Engineering/SEM2MWZO0WF_0.html