Lunar dust tolerant thermal louver development for a light-weight rover system

Date

7/12/2021

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

50th International Conference on Environmental Systems

Abstract

To boldly go where no small rover has gone before. The exploration of the Earth�s Moon poses many challenges and offers equally many opportunities for governmental and private entities. Lower costs, reduced complexity and flexibility make light-weight rovers an attractive commercial alternative compared to traditional large RHU/RTG powered systems. However, several thermal hardware advances are needed to make small platform missions feasible. The Polar Ice Explorer (PIE) is an in-situ resource exploration mission that aims to find and characterise potential water ice deposits in the lunar polar regions. In the scope of this project, a passively actuated louvered radiator is being developed to minimise heater power consumption of the rover platform. The paper discusses findings from the initial design and prototyping phases of the louver hardware development. Preliminary thermal trade-offs conducted to assess several louver design concepts, such as, classical vane solutions, sliding in-plane designs, rotary blade and folding blade options. Lunar dust tolerance was one of the driving requirements for the detailed mechanical design phase, where radiator degradation and open/close motion of the hardware were assessed. To minimise the power consumption three passive actuation mechanisms were compared: piezoelectrics, bimetallic springs and shape memory alloys. Both in-plane and out-of-plane design strategies were considered with more focus given to the in-plane option to minimise the dynamic envelope. Specific mass per unit area for space heritage solutions on the market ranged from 11.0 to 19.5 kg/m2, hence the overall mass goal was <0.5 kg. Thermal performance of at least 1.5 W per 10 x 10 cm area was evaluated based on the thermal analysis results. Structural assessment was conducted to further reduce blade mass and comply with dynamic environments throughout the expected mission lifetime.

Description

Dmitri Ivanov, ispace Europe
Domingos Fernandes, ispace Europe
ICES102: Thermal Control for Planetary and Small Body Surface Missions
The 50th International Conference on Environmental Systems was held virtually on 12 July 2021 through 14 July 2021.

Keywords

Moon, Rover, Louver, Thermal hardware, Thermal Control, Lunar surface, ISRU

Citation