Speaker
Description
As small satellite production is moving toward industrialized, scalable models, the need for flexible and mission-adaptable thermal management becomes crucial. HAWK PLUS, Argotec’s standardized and modular satellite platform, integrates thermal design flexibility as a core architectural principle to support a wide range of mission profiles and orbital environments.
Although HAWK PLUS is based on a standard platform, its thermal control architecture is fully adaptable and can be configured according to specific mission requirements and payload characteristics. Thermal control strategies on HAWK PLUS are highly configurable to accommodate a broad range of mission profiles, including those with drastically different thermal environments, by combining both passive and active techniques. Passive control may include variable optical surface properties, thermal switches and thermal straps, with material and placement optimized depending on orbital environment and power dissipation of the different sub-systems. Active control may be implemented via heaters, with independent power and logic routing through standardized interfaces.
For the purpose of thermal verification, the payload is simulated as a cubic aluminum box with variable internal heat dissipation ranging from 5 W to 500 W, depending on the mission and on the operative mode. Moreover, the payload is considered in both internal and external configurations relative to the satellite core. The thermal design is evaluated under both Worst Hot Case (WHC) and Worst Cold Case (WCC) scenarios, based on mission-defined orbital conditions as well as different operating profiles and attitudes. These boundary cases are used to assess thermal stability, heater activation needs, and passive radiator sizing.
In addition, extended communication scenarios are simulated to account for transient power dissipation profiles during active uplink and downlink phases. The thermal response of the avionics modules is analyzed to ensure that critical components remain within allowable temperature ranges throughout the mission cycle.
A dedicated Structural Thermal Model (STM) is used to emulate different payload configurations and support the characterization of the thermal model. The STM has different dummy masses, to represent the different subsystems, which can be equipped with resistive heaters to reproduce variable internal power dissipation. This approach enables a representative thermal response under mission-relevant conditions, providing valuable insight into the accuracy and robustness of the thermal design.
This work presents the thermal design approach adopted in the HAWK PLUS platform, highlighting the configurability of thermal paths, the integration of passive and active components, and the validation approach for different use cases. The objective is to ensure repeatability across platform instances while maintaining adaptability to variable thermal environments and mission-specific constraints.
