• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.580-585
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• 2009

Thermal analysis and design of FPA(Focal Plane Assembly)-CU(Cooling Unit) for Earth observation camera is performed. FPA-CU is the first cooling device for a spacecraft which is designed and manufactured by its own technology in Korea. FPA-CU has a special feature, TBM(Thermal Buffer Mass) which is discriminated from typical cooling devices using heat pipes and radiator. TBM can be regarded as a thermal energy reservoir and it shows thermally transient characteristics, which make it difficult to design the size and shape of TBM. In current study, a method to determine the volume and the size of TBM is proposed and validated. The transient thermal analysis for FPA-CU for 5 operational scenarios is performed and validates the final design of FPA-CU (Radiator,TBM, Heat pipe I/F). In case of an abnormal operation of a heat pipe among three radiator heat pipes, the temperature of FPA can be increased $3{\sim}4^{\circ}C$ according to the numerical simulation.