Thermal Stability Testing of Two-Phase Thermal Control Hardware for the Surface Water Ocean Topography Mission

Abstract

The thermal architecture of the proposed Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission would utilize loop heat pipes (LHPs) and constant conductance heat pipes (CCHPs) to transport waste heat (> 1 kW) from the instrument electronics to the radiator. The main thermal design risk is the ability to maintain a temporal stability of <0.05°C/min in a low earth orbit environment. The stringent thermal requirements are part of the overall error budget needed to meet the primary mission science goals. A testbed was developed to simulate flight-like loads and environments in order to validate the thermal subsystem could meet the temporal stability requirements.