TCS Activities for Preparation of Columbus Stage 1.E 2008-01-2032
A very significant effort has been conducted in the 2007 to adequately prepare the off-site support to be provided by Thales Alenia Space Italia (TAS-I) to the Columbus Mission Stage 1.E. for Thermal Control aspects.
The tasks have been conducted in the frame of the Engineering Support Team (EST) Off-Site responsibilities in response to the requests and in strict cooperation with the On-Site Support Team.
The activities have considered all the constituents of the Thermal Control System (TCS) of Columbus including the Payloads to be utilized during the Stage 1.E and have covered the different stage phases since the Launch-to-Activation phase up to the Payloads activation and operation ones.
A large slice of activities have concerned the simulation of the Active Thermal Control Subsystem (ATCS) and Passive Thermal Control Subsystem (PTCS) operations and resources to the equipment and Payloads in nominal, off-nominal and emergency conditions.
The Flight Prediction Thermal Analyses relevant to the Launch-To-Activation (LTA) mission phase have been revisited on the basis of the mission timeline, the ISS attitude with its configuration and the dedicated Thermal Mathematical Models (TMM's) have been set-up accordingly, to allow a prompt and fast simulation of the PTCS (heaters) performances in nominal and off-nominal cases.
The TMM's of European Internal Payloads, have been reduced, validated towards the complete ones and then integrated with the Columbus Integrated Overall Thermal Mathematical Model (IOTMM) to predict the thermal hydraulic behaviour and performances of the complete system in some defined operational nominal cases. A similar approach has been followed to evaluate the thermal functioning of the European External Payloads when operated with Columbus.
Finally, off-nominal scenarios formalized and transmitted by dedicated Flight Control Team generated E-Chit's have been processed and solved through engineering evaluations performed by analyses and test reviews to allow the final tuning of flight procedures and rules.
For all the PTCS and ATCS components the main data concerning their physical characteristics, performances and interfaces in nominal and off-nominal conditions have been collected in the form of Fact Sheets to be utilized during the mission.
Citation: Bufano, G., Vaccaneo, P., Antonacci, M., Pigella, M. et al., "TCS Activities for Preparation of Columbus Stage 1.E," SAE Technical Paper 2008-01-2032, 2008, https://doi.org/10.4271/2008-01-2032. Download Citation
