Future of Small Satellite Thermal Control
The observed increase in power density of small satellites means that dedicated thermal control becomes vital in order to continue the development of high-performance small-satellite missions.
ISISPACE and NLR have identified this need and have come up with solutions for CubeSat thermal control. A mini-mechanically pumped loop developed by Royal NLR provides a reliable solution for dissipating the heat produced by the satellite’s electronics. NLR developed a modular modelling application in the space thermal analysis tool ESATAN-TMS that demonstrates how this mini pump can be an effective solution. In addition, together with ISISPACE a modular approach to CubeSat thermal modelling was successfully researched and created to allow for rapid thermal modelling of small satellites with validated submodels.