Abstract Radiative cooling of IR space telescopes is an alternative to embedding within massive cryostats and should offer advantages for future missions, including longer life, larger aperture for a fixed spacecraft size, lower cost due to less complex engineering, and easier ground handling. Relatively simple analyses of conventional designs show that it is possible to achieve telescope temperatures in the range of 25 to 40 K at distances from the sun of about 1 AU. Lower temperatures may be possible with “open” designs or distant orbits. At ∼ 25 K, an observatory will be limited by the celestial thermal background in the near- and mid-IR and by the confusion limit in the far-IR. We outline here our concept for a moderate aperture (∼ 1.75 m; Ariane 4 or Atlas launch) international space observatory for the next decade.


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    Title :

    Edison and radiatively-cooled IR space observatories


    Contributors:
    Thronson, H.A. (author) / Hawarden, T.G. (author) / Bally, J. (author) / Bell Burnell, S.J. (author) / Penny, A.J. (author) / Rapp, D. (author)

    Published in:

    Advances in Space Research ; 13 , 12 ; 531-534


    Publication date :

    1993-01-01


    Size :

    4 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    EDISON and Radiatively-Cooled IR Space Observatories

    Thronson, H.A. | Online Contents | 1993


    Edison and radiatively-cooled IR space observatories

    Thronson, H. A. / Hawarden, T. G. / Bally, J. et al. | NTRS | 1993


    EDISON and Radiatively-Cooled IR Space Observatories

    Thronson, H. A. / Hawarden, T. G. / Bally, J. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993


    Geostationary Radiatively-Cooled Telescope (GROT)

    Sholomitskii, G.B. | Online Contents | 2000


    Geostationary Radiatively-Cooled Telescope (GROT)

    Sholomitskii, G. B. / Maslov, I. A. / International Council of Scientific Unions | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000