Issues and Implications of the Thermal Control System on the 'Six Day Spacecraft'

摘要

One aspect that poses a significant hurdle to achieving the goals of Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) and the six day satellite is the thermal control system (TCS). Traditionally the TCS must be vigorously designed, analyzed, tested, and optimized from the ground up for every satellite mission. This reinvention of the wheel is costly and time intensive. Current design cycles require years. Next generation satellite thermal management must be robust, modular, and scalable in order to cover a wide range of applications, orbits, and mission requirements. To provide a baseline for the TCS design and to help bound the problem for the development of robust and modular thermal designs, a bus sizing exercise was conducted to determine an upper and lower bound for the internal heat load of the system. This exercise also provided mass and volume estimates. In addition, the range of external heat loads for small satellites in low earth orbit were evaluated. From this analysis, the worst hot and cold cases conditions were identified. Using these two cases, various design parameters were evaluated, two different design approaches were compared, and the feasibility of a one-size-fits-all approach is assessed. Finally, critical design parameters are identified.