RUAG Space opens new cleanrooms for space production
Swiss space company will produce satellite instruments and electro-optical systems
It took just seven months to build the facilities, which are located in what was formerly the site’s raw materials store. They are designed so that each stage of production – from parts assembly to measurements in the vacuum chamber – can be completed without the components having to leave the cleanrooms. RUAG Space says there are only one or two such facilities in the world.
Axel Deich, head of RUAG Space Switzerland, said the new cleanrooms would provide an excellent infrastructure for both current and future projects.
“Our extremely demanding assignments in the fields of laser communication and scientific instruments for satellites will be the primary beneficiaries of this outlay,” he added.
The Zurich-Seebach facilities comprise one ISO Class 8 cleanroom that covers approximately 100m2, one similar-sized ISO Class 6.5 cleanroom, and four ISO Class 5 cleanrooms, each roughly 40m2 in area. The Class 5 cleanrooms boast a maximum permissible particle count of 100 particles per cubic foot. For the sake of comparison, a human being produces around 300,000 particles a minute when sitting down, and as many as three million when walking slowly.
The ultra-modern cleanrooms are equipped with 14km of power and network cables run under the floors and through the walls to their respective terminals. A kilometre of small pipes made of highest-grade chromium steel are supplied with ultra-pure nitrogen from huge canisters in the basement. In addition, 500m of vacuum cleaner hose carry all traces of dust out of the rooms through suction pipes in the walls and into massive containers in the basement.
The new cleanrooms, installed and supplied by Plantec of Switzerland, also boast a sophisticated ventilation system, the first of its kind in Switzerland, which reduces energy consumption to a minimum. The facility has also been validated and certified by the relevant authorities.
As part of the Ariane programme, RUAG Space is responsible for the development of payload fairings, which protect satellites on the nose of the launch vehicle from the forces to which they are exposed on their journey into space. In the 1960s, long before the first Ariane lifted off from Kourou, work on the first European satellite, ESRO-1, and the high-altitude research missile Zenit, marked Switzerland's initiation into space flight.
Today RUAG Space employs more than 500 people at its Zurich, Nyon and Emmen locations, developing and producing a range of products for the space industry.
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