A team of scientists at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center has built a passive thermal-control technology designed to integrate with miniaturized satellites used for space research.
Allison Evans, project principal investigator, and her team members created the thermal-control unit by repurposing a large panel of louvers that were initially used on spacecraft in the 1960s, NASA said Tuesday.
The agency noted each unit comprises a boron nitride nano mesh-based back plate, aluminum front plate and flaps and bimetallic springs.
Evans and other Goddard scientists have evaluated the performance of the technology through a benchtop lifecycle test, thermal-vacuum test cycles and a vibration test.
NASA plans to demonstrate the small thermal-control system during the maiden flight of a newfangled six-unit CubeSat known as Dellingr and built by a team of agency scientists and engineers at the Goddard facility.