Technical Paper
Cryogenic Cooling of the F.I.R.ST. Payload
1994-06-01
941624
The European Space Agency Far Infra-Red and Sub-millimeter Space Telescope (FIRST) is one of the four designated “Cornerstone” missions in the long term science plan “Horizon 2000”. FIRST is intended to open up the last major part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the sub-millimeter and far infra-red range, which is still mainly inaccessible to observational astronomers. In 1992 an industrial consortium led by Dornier was tasked with developing a spacecraft concept for a payload comprising one Far Infra-Red (FIR) direct detection instrument and one Multi-Frequency Heterodyne (MFH) instrument. In order to minimise the launch mass, a mechanically cooled concept was proposed in which the payload is cooled to 4K using the range of mechanical coolers originally developed by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and industrialised by jointly funded ESA/BAe contracts.
