Speaker
Description
Under the “European Thermo-Electric Cooler for Star Trackers” ITT Activity in the esa-star Tendering system, Azimut Space GmbH, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques (IPM), embarked on this project in order to develop a European supply chain of thermo-electric coolers (TECs, but also known as Peltier coolers) for European star trackers. Furthermore, this activity encompasses the design, manufacture, and testing of TECs suitable for star tracker applications, which in turn, are specified by European producers of star trackers.
The TECs were designed based on the performance requirements from the star tracker manufacturers and consequently manufactured and screened by Fraunhofer IPM. In turn, environmental and reliability test campaigns were carried out by Azimut Space.
The project was split into a preliminary phase, a de-risking phase and a functional verification phase. During the preliminary phase, a single TEC design was developed and used for assessing and overcoming manufacturing and testing challenges. The de-risking phase was introduced as manufacturing challenges were indeed encountered, so it was necessary to identify failure causes before moving on to the next phase. Finally, during the functional verification phase, two TEC designs were developed using the previously established manufacturing process, as well as being able to survive realistic (and expected) environmental conditions (mechanical shock and vibration, thermal cycling, operational measurements) and to keep an acceptable BOL/EOL performance decay. Upon the completion of the project, the TECs will achieve TRL6 and set the path for a full qualification campaign for space applications, aiming to reach TRL 8.