There has been a high demand for low-cost thermal vacuum testing facility for Lean satellite (1U CubeSat) program in emerging space economies. Most often, CubeSat testing is performed in a complex and expensive thermal vacuum chamber equipped with for example shroud filled liquid nitrogen (boiling point is-195.7oC) for simulating the cold temperature environment as close to the cold heat sink of outer space in a simulated low pressure (>10-3 Pa) chamber environment. This paper introduces PeTT vacuum chamber as a low cost and easy access testing facility suitable for simulating cold temperature plateaus for performing a functional test of the internal subsystems of Lean satellite (1U CubeSat) functional test. Under ISO 19683: “Design Qualification and Acceptance Test of Spacecraft and Units”, the test requirement for cold temperature plateau is equal to - or more than -15oC. The PeTT vacuum chamber has been developed to achieve ISO 19683 test requirements. The PeTT vacuum chamber consists of a Peltier cooling device integrated inside a vacuum chamber. The Peltier cooling device consists of 4multi-stage Peltier elements sandwiched in-between a copper surface plate and water cooler has a mass of 3.4kg and size 152mm length × 127mm width × 40 mm height. The Peltier cooling device is targeted for performing 1U Cubesat functional test by conduction heat transfer. The Peltier cooling device has a total maximum exchange heat capability of 400W which runs by water cooling system and varying DC power supply. The vacuum chamber has an inner diameter of 55cm equipped with a rotary pump and diffusion pump to achieve a low pressure around 10–4 Pa. The main goal of this paper is to provide low cost and easy access testing technique for space activities in emerging space economies especially universities space research and development laboratories, to build their capacity in the installation and operation of a thermal vacuum testing facility. This paper provides details of the design and development of the PeTT vacuum chamber, cost, and results for testing 1U dummy CubeSat.
Demonstration of Lean Satellite (1U CubeSat) Testing Using PeTT Vacuum Chamber
2019-06-01
3147386 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Taylor & Francis Verlag | 1926
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