PSP Bibliography



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Solar probe plus solar array cooling system T-Vac test


AuthorCho, Wei-Lin; Ercol, Carl;
KeywordsCooling systems; Interplanetary flight; NASA; Probes; Software testing; Solar energy; Spacecraft; Thermoelectric equipment; Waste heat; Parker Engineering
AbstractThe Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, is designing and building the Solar Probe Plus (SPP) spacecraft and managing the project for NASA s Living with a Star (LWS) program. The main objectives of the SPP mission are to understand the Sun s coronal magnetic field, the causes of solar corona and solar wind heating and acceleration, and the mechanisms of energetic particles acceleration and transportation. To achieve these objectives, the SPP spacecraft needs to make in-situ measurements in the Sun s atmosphere. In its mission life, the SPP spacecraft will achieve twenty-four perihelia. With multiple Venus gravity-assist flybys, the SPP spacecraft gradually descends to the Sun s atmosphere from the first solar encounter at 35.7 Rs to the final three perihelia at 9.86 Rs which is closer than any other previous probes. During those passes, the peak solar flux can be as high as ~500 suns, or 70 W/cm2 which is more than 50 times higher than the solar heating seen by any previous spacecraft. Since the SPP spacecraft is solar-powered, its solar arrays need to be functional and produce electricity to operate the spacecraft for its mission life. To ensure the solar arrays functionality, the solar cell operating temperature needs to be maintained within the designed limits. Removing the waste heat generated by the solar cells and rejecting it to deep space during the close solar encounters can be very challenging. Based on SPP Phase A efforts1,2, a full size prototype active solar array cooling system (SACS) was developed, built, and tested in SPP Phase B program. After extensive and rigorous thermal-vacuum (T-VAC) tests verifying the SACS performance, the full size prototype SPP SACS has successfully achieved Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 6.
Year of Publication2014
Journal28th Space Simulation Conference - Extreme Environments: Pushing the Boundaries
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