SVOM has left the building

An update on the X-ray optic for the Chinese-French satellite SVOM, by Charly Feldman.

Further to the post published by Julian Osborne in October, the SVOM FM optic has now completed all its X-ray and environmental testing. It has been shaked and baked and survived all with no noticeable changes! This has been confirmed by in house X-ray tests.

This week has been very exciting for our little lobster eye optic. After being packaged up last week it left campus on Monday (14^th December) with its passport, was driven to Munich arriving on Tuesday and is now sat in another X-ray beam line being pumped down ready for full calibration.

This delivery is the culmination of nearly 6 years of hard work from the SVOM team and even with all the pressures of this year, the optic has left on time and before BREXIT!

We are very excited about the calibration measurements being taken at PANTER, MPE in the New Year and look forward to updating you all!