Thermal management of spacecraft | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2019-05-17

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control


00:04:24 1 Thermal Control Systems
00:06:18 2 Environment
00:11:09 3 Temperature Requirements
00:12:50 4 Current Technologies
00:13:01 4.1 Coating
00:13:48 4.2 Multilayer Insulation (MLI)
00:16:17 4.3 Louvers
00:17:28 4.4 Heaters
00:20:34 4.5 Radiators
00:22:30 4.6 Heat pipes
00:22:57 5 Future of Thermal Control Systems
00:23:56 6 Events
00:24:19 7 Sun shield
00:25:27 8 See also
00:25:49 9 Bibliography



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SUMMARY
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In spacecraft design, the function of the thermal control system (TCS) is to keep all the spacecraft's component systems within acceptable temperature ranges during all mission phases. It must cope with the external environment, which can vary in a wide range as the spacecraft is exposed to deep space or to solar or planetary flux, and with ejecting to space the internal heat generated by the operation of the spacecraft itself.
Thermal control is essential to guarantee the optimum performance and success of the mission because if a component is subjected to temperatures which are too high or too low, it could be damaged or its performance could be severely affected. Thermal control is also necessary to keep specific components (such as optical sensors, atomic clocks, etc.) within a specified temperature stability requirement, to ensure that they perform as efficiently as possible. 
The thermal control subsystem can be composed both of passive and of active items and works in two ways:

protects the equipment from overheating, either by thermal insulation from external heat fluxes (such as the Sun or the planetary infrared and albedo flux), or by proper heat removal from internal sources (such as the heat emitted by the internal electronic equipment).
protects the equipment from temperatures that are too cold, by thermal insulation from external sinks, by enhanced heat absorption from external sources, or by heat release from internal sources.Passive Thermal Control System (PTCS) components include:

Multi-layer insulation (MLI), which protects the spacecraft from excessive solar or planetary heating as well as from excessive cooling when exposed to deep space
coatings that change the thermo-optical properties of external surfaces
thermal fillers to improve the thermal coupling at selected interfaces (for instance on the thermal path between an electronic unit and its radiator)
thermal washers to reduce the thermal coupling at selected interfaces
thermal doublers to spread on the radiator surface the heat dissipated by equipment
mirrors (secondary surface mirrors, SSM, or optical solar reflectors, OSR) to improve the heat rejection capability of the external radiators and at the same time to reduce the absorption of external solar fluxes
radioisotope heater units (RHU), used by some planetary and exploratory missions to produce heat for TCS purposesActive Thermal Control System (ATCS) components include:

thermostatically controlled resistive electric heaters to keep the equipment temperature above its lower limit during the mission's cold phases
fluid loops to transfer the heat emitted by equipment to the radiators. They can be:
single-phase loops, controlled by a pump
two-phase loops, composed of heat pipes (HP), loop heat pipes (LHP) or capillary pumped loops (CPL)
louvers (which change the heat rejection capability to space as a function of temperature)
thermoelectric coolers