The paper describes the design, development, manufacturing and testing of a Heat Transport System (HTS) for thermal control of a Laser Communication Terminal (LCT) on the TerraSar satellite. A small part of the LCT requires accurate temperature control. This device is the diode laser, which feeds the laser oscillator with pump light. Since the temperature variation of the diode laser determines to some extend the efficiency and the performance of the laser oscillator, its temperature needs to be controlled with high accuracy at various set points in a range of 30 to 50 ℃. The developed HTS is based on Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) technology, which uses the same basic principle as widely known in heat pipes, i.e. closed evaporation-condensation cycle being maintained by capillary pumping. The paper describes the LHP thermal control system and reports on ground tests demonstrating the LHP-performance of providing the required temperature stability for the LCT on TerraSar.
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