DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF AN ~(241)AM-FUELLED RHU FOR THE ESA PROGRAM

摘要

Radioisotope heater units (RHUs) are fundamental to keep the internal spacecraft temperatures within the required operational and survival limits, especially in regions where the availability of solar power is limited. A new RHU architecture has been developed for the European Space Agency (ESA) radioisotope power system (RPS) programme and ~(241)Am has been selected as radioisotope heat source. The design implements a multilayer containment approach. Re-entry performance studies have confirmed the compliance with safety requirements, while thermal and structural modelling and testing have proved the feasibility of the design. This paper presents the architecture and some of the experimental results correlated with the output of the theoretical models.