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Technical Paper

Flight Performance of the Spacelab Astro-1 Mission Integrated Radiator System

1991-07-01
911589
This paper describes the design and performance characteristics of the thermal control system for the Spacelab Astro-1 payload. Dubbed the Integrated Radiator System, or IRS, the assembly is a thermal radiation system designed to maintain the temperature of payload electronics packages within a specified range, regardless of payload or orbiter orientation in space. The radiator is passive in its ability to reject heat, but active when the lower temperature limit is reached. At that point, resistance heaters are energized to maintain the radiator surface temperature within acceptable range. The performance of the radiator system during its flight aboard the Space Shuttle is reported in this paper. An earlier paper presented the thermal analysis and test data predicting the performance of the radiator system before the flight. In this paper, data collected during the flight is reported and compared to the performance predicted by analyses and tests.
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