Conceptual Thermal Design of the Carrier Relay Stage for the NASA Europa Lander Mission

Date

2017-07-16

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

47th International Conference on Environmental Systems

Abstract

NASA missions to the outer planets face unique power and thermal management challenges. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is currently working two NASA missions to Jupiter’s moon Europa – Multiple-Flyby (aka “Clipper”) and Lander – using different approaches to this thermal management problem. Unlike near-Earth missions, the solar intensity Europa decreases to <4% of the “near Earth” environment. Lacking a feasible “other than electrical” power source, thermal management of these missions must maximize reclamation of the heat generated by the onboard avionic, in order to minimize the amount of electrical heater power needed. The challenge of spreading this heat throughout the spacecraft is compounded by housing the avionics in a “vault” to protect them from the harsh radiation environment, rather than distributing them throughout the spacecraft.

These two missions uses different thermal control concepts to achieve the heat reclamation. While Clipper uses a pumped loop to distribute this avionics heat throughout the spacecraft with minimal heaters, the Carrier spacecraft for the Lander mission has baselined traditional heat pipes to spread this avionics heat into the relatively thick aluminum spacecraft body and uses minimal electrical heaters. Further power savings can be realized either by jettisoning the large external fuel tanks after they are depleted in planned cruise phase and the Jupiter orbital insertion maneuvers, or allowing them to freeze in place.

This paper will present details of the Carrier thermal analysis and design effort through the early SC configuration trade studies, leading up to the Mission Concept Review.

Description

Eric Grob, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), USA
ICES202: Satellite, Payload, and Instrument Thermal Control
The 47th International Conference on Environmental Systems was held in South Carolina, USA on 16 July 2017 through 20 July 2017

Keywords

Thermal, Europa, NASA, heat pipe

Citation