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One of the current applications for cryogenic heat pipes is the European astronomy satellite INTEGRAL where two aluminium / ammonia axially grooved heat pipes will be used to transport a heat load of 20 W from an intermediate stage at 210K to a radiator. A prototype heat pipe of 1.65m long, with a 14 mm outside diameter, has been manufactured and tested. The extrapolated 0g maximum heat transport capability at 200K is 60 W.m. Tests have shown the reliability of the ammonia heat pipe to work close to its freezing point (down to 197K) and its ability to thaw within a few minutes using the right procedure. A development model with the same heat pipe profile but filled with ethane has shown a maximum heat transport capability of 19 W.m at 200K under 5 mm adverse tilt (46 W.m for the ammonia) and just a few watts at ambient temperature. This confirms the suitability of the ammonia heat pipe for the INTEGRAL application, where the operating temperature is [200K;300K].

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is a European Space Agency autonomous, expendable logistic transportation system for Low Earth Orbit. The ATV will be launched by Ariane 5 and its mission is to contribute to the logistic servicing of the International Space Station: via the delivery of a cargo (crew items, scientific experiments, spare parts..) as well as of fluids such as propellant, water and compressed air via the provision of an extra service consisting of retrieving the station wastes when departing (replacing the upcoming cargo) and getting rid of them through the final destructive atmospheric re-entry of the ATV itself via the contribution to the orbit control of ISS by providing a reboost and attitude control capability to the ISS. The ATV consists of a Spacecraft and an Integrated Cargo Carrier. The Spacecraft includes all subsystems necessary for the automated flight to the ISS and for the reboost, including the propellant tanks and the thrusters.

One way to increase thermal software performance has been developed at AEROSPATIALE Cannes by means of a condensation algorithm for conductive models (EQUIVALE). The benefit of this improvement is exportable to other software packages by developing specific interfaces. Therefore, two gateways are now available to perform ESATAN conductive models condensation: the first (ESAEQU) translates the initial ESATAN input deck into the different files required by EQUIVALE; the second (EQUESA) generates a new ESATAN input deck including the equivalent conductances provided by EQUIVALE. Three examples of application are described hereafter: the first (RADIATOR PANEL) illustrates the condensation processing coupled to ESATAN, the second (TV-SAT/TDF), more realistic, refers to a flight model in the frame of the AEROSPATIALE Thermal Software environment and the third (TÜRKSAT) shows the optimum use of EQUIVALE with the combination of both PLATEAU and EQUIVALE software packages.

This paper presents the last developments which have been performed at SABCA under internal funding, and the application of this work on the Technological Telecommunication Satellite STENTOR. The High Performance Capillary Pumped Loop ( HPCPL ) has been defined to get a reliable operation mode under a very wide range of operation conditions. Preliminary results have been already presented (ref. (1)), showing the high performances and the reliable functional characteristics of the HPCPL. The present paper emphasises the last developments which have been performed at SABCA.