MELFI thermal verification before the first flight

摘要

The Minus Eighty degrees Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) is a freezer that will be delivered to NASA as Laboratory Support Equipment (LSE) by ESA. A first qualification test campaign was conducted with the DM (Development Model) Brayton Sub-System (BSS) installed in MELFI QM (Qualification Model) rack. This test campaign gave a lot of information on MELFI thermal system behavior. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from these first performance tests raised questions about the tests to be performed with MELFI first flight model. Thus, this paper will present the qualification test results, the observations made after these tests and, in the light of these remarks, the logic followed to completely re-define the thermal test plan in order to fully cover the verification of the thermal requirements before MELFI first flight.