Search Results

Bepi Colombo is an ESA mission targeted to the exploration of Mercury with two spacecraft, a Mercury Polar Orbiter (MPO) provided by Europe and a Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) provided by Japan. The Mission is lead by Astrium Friedrichshafen, with Thales Alenia space Torino responsible for the MPO thermal design. The MPO is a 3-axis stabilized scientific spacecraft in Mercury polar eccentric orbit, with altitude from 400 to 1500 km, with one face planet oriented and pointing Nadir, and housing the apertures of the observation P/L. Studies for this mission were initiated in the late 90ies, and pointed out that one of the main design drivers for the MPO was the thermal environment in orbit, due to the combination of high solar constant (up to 10 solar constants on Earth), infrared and albedo from the planet (maximum IR up to about 4 terrestrial solar constants, albedo up to about 1).

Solar Orbiter is the next solar-heliospheric mission in the Science Programme of ESA. The mission will provide the next major step forward in the exploration of the Sun and the heliosphere to investigate many of the fundamental problems in solar and heliospheric science. The near-Sun phase of the mission will enable the spacecraft to approach the Sun as close as 0.22 AU during part of its orbit, thereby permitting observations from a quasi heliosynchronous vantage point. During the out-of-ecliptic phase of the mission, Solar Orbiter will reach higher solar latitudes, up to 34° close to the end of the mission, to observe also the polar regions of the sun. The 3 axis stabilized spacecraft will carry two groups of scientific instruments: In-situ instruments to study the local environment and Remote Sensing instruments to observe the sun, therefore the latter will require apertures in the face oriented towards the Sun.

ASA (Advanced Structural Assembly) is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) technological development program which has the purpose to investigate and improve the knowhow on fundamental technologies relevant to the field of the space re-entry vehicles. A wing segment collecting different experiments will be tested in the Plasma Wind Tunnel (PWT) available at the Scirocco facility. One of the technologies under investigation is the active cooling applied to a wing leading edge element. That design solution is challenging both for manufacturing and for thermal-hydraulic aspects. A dedicated analysis campaign was performed at design level and a development test was carried out on a representative “breadboard” to verify the basic assumptions before the manufacturing of the final technological demonstrator which will be tested in the Plasma Wind Tunnel facility.

Today, in several industrial fields, the integration of functions is a key technology to enhance the efficiency of components in terms of performance to mass/volume/cost/ratio. Concerning the space industry, in the last few years the trend in spacecraft design has been towards smaller, light-weight and higher performance satellites with sophisticated payloads and instrumentation. Increasing power density figures are the common feature of such systems, constituting a challenging task for the Thermal Control System. The traditional mechanical and thermal design concepts are evidencing their limits with reference to such an emerging scenario.

During the Bridging Phase of the Columbus project, the Attached Pressurised Module has been subjected to a series of design changes to accommodate the new International Space Station interface requirements and to comply with the reduced budget allocated to the Columbus Orbiting Facility (COF) Programme. In parallel to the studies aimed to define the COF Configuration, tests have been performed on the Thermal Control Subsystem, in those areas not affected by redesign changes, to investigate some typical aspects in thermo-hydraulic mathematical simulation areas and in the passive design areas.