Nanosatellites

9 I-2hThermal Design, Analysis, and Test

Philipp Reiss¹, Matthias Killian¹, and Philipp Hager²

¹Institute of Astronautics, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany

²European Space Agency, Keplerlaan 1, Noordwijk, the Netherlands

9.1 Introduction

The thermal control system (TCS) of a satellite interfaces with nearly all other subsystems. The TCS has to manage external heat loads from the environment, as well as internal heat loads from components inside the satellite. The goal of the TCS is to control all heat loads in order to meet the thermal requirements of all components. Thermal requirements are temperature ranges, temperature gradients, and temperature stability. The TCS has to ensure that the temperatures of all components are kept within the respective operational and nonoperational temperature ranges throughout the lifetime of the satellite. The thermal design of each individual satellite is therefore unique and adapted to the particular requirements and boundary conditions of the system and its mission. It evolves from an increasingly detailed thermal analysis over the entire process of the satellite design, and finds its verification with the thermal test of the integrated satellite. A TCS may imply methods of thermal control, either of passive or active nature, to fulfill its goal.

Inappropriate thermal design of a satellite might equivalently lead to overheating or undercooling of components, assemblies, or instruments. In the best case, this only leads ...