Engineering Evaluation Laboratory

The Engineering Evaluation Laboratory (EEL) is an award winning environmental test facility supporting all facets of R&D and flight system development activities at NASA Ames Research Center.  The EEL is a customer service organization, providing a collaborative environment for test development, implementation, and evaluation.

Overview

The Engineering Evaluation Laboratory is located on the NASA Ames Research Center campus in building N244 High Bay. The Engineering Evaluation Laboratory (EEL) is an environmental test facility supporting all facets of R&D along with a major focus on launch environment testing and space environment testing for small spacecraft and flight instruments. The EEL is a customer service organization, providing a collaborative environment for test development, implementation, and evaluation. Services offered by this shop have provided critical assistance to programs at all NASA centers, as evidenced by the numerous awards and high customer praise. Test capabilities include random vibration, thermal vacuum, shock, thermal altitude, centrifuge, weight and center of gravity, moment of inertia, RF, and many more. Test engineering support for large scale projects throughout the decades include Pioneer Venus, Galileo Probe, LCROSS and LADEE. With specialized data acquisition and instrumentation ranging from dynamic signal analysis, cable harnessing, and strain gaging, the EEL is here to help you with your project test engineering needs and processes.

Capabilities

Each of our highly qualified lab staff members have a minimum of 25 years of testing experience in the EEL, handling and testing space flight hardware, avionics, wind tunnel instrumentation, and life science payloads. They are experienced in operating a variety of electrical and mechanical test devices and are experts in the area of instrumentation and data acquisition. They also assemble test cables and connectors, develop software on data acquisition systems, and design/fabricate test fixtures in our on-site machine shop. The staff undergoes continuous education and training to further their knowledge in the use o the latest test equipment.

Services

• Space Flight Hardware Qualification and Acceptance Testing
• Environmental Testing (temperature, vibration, shock, altitude, pressure, acceleration)
• Thermo-Vacuum Testing
• Mass Properties Determination
• Parts Screening
• Strain Gaging
• Tensile Testing
• Fatigue Testing
• Customized Data Acquisition

Equipment

• Ling Vibration Table
• Impact Shock Machine
• Genisco Centrifuge
• Tenney Altitude/Temperature Chamber
• Despatch Humidity/Temperature Chamber
• Instron Fatigue Machine
• Southwark-Emery Tensile Machine
• Abbess Thermo-Vacuum Chamber
• Dynavac Thermal Vacuum Chamber
• Bake-Out Ovens
• OMT Tilt Table
• Center of Gravity Instrument
• Moment of Inertia Instrument
• Strain Gage Equipment
• HP Dynamic Signal Analyzer
• Test Equipment & Instrumentation
• Data Acquisition Systems
• 5 Ton Overhead Crane
• Machining Tools
• Portable ISO class 7 (10K) Cleanroom, 250 sq. ft.
• Portable ISO class 7 (10K) Cleanroom, 80 sq. ft.
• RF Test Facility

Recent Customers/Users

LCROSS, LADEE, SOFIA, NAIMS, CEV, RAVB, LRTA, NFAC, Micro Satellites, UH-60, Space Shuttle Payloads, Global Hawk, Unitary Wind Tunnel

Point of Contact

Dean Giovannetti
Dean.P.Giovannetti@nasa.gov