Technical Paper
Design and Ambient Testing of the Flight Starter Pump Cold Plate
1996-07-01
961433
Capillary Pumped Loops (CPLs) have been under development for almost two decades and are emerging as a design solution for many spacecraft thermal control systems. Three Capillary Pumped Heat Transport Systems (CPHTS) using CPL technology have been selected for accommodating the two Earth Observing System (EOS-AM) instruments that require advanced waste heat dissipation. The Capillary Pumped Loop Flight Experiment (CAPL-2) [Ref 7], which was carried on board STS-69, successfully demonstrated an EOS-like capillary system utilizing a prototyped starter pump cold plate (SCP). The CAPL-2 SCP is almost identical to the EOS-AM configuration and was designed, built, and demonstrated to overcome the start-up difficulty under fully flooded conditions. The SCP was rigorous ground tested as part of a simulated EOS-AM / CAPL-2 capillary loop, and the SCP successfully met or surpassed all of its performance requirements.