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European Space Agency's (ESA's) Columbus module was launched on February 7, 2008. This marks the completion of more than 10 years of development. It is a major step forward for Europe in the area of Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) as Columbus contains several major assemblies which have been developed in Europe. These include the Condensing Heat Exchanger, Condensate Water Separator and the Cabin Fans. The paper gives a short overview of the system and its features and it will report the experiences from the initial activation and operations phase.

Metop (METeorological OPerational satellite) is a series of three satellites designed to monitor the climate and improve weather forecasting. This paper describes the thermal analysis, thermal testing performed, and relevant lessons learned. For the thermal analysis campaigns it focuses on: exchange and correlation of reduced thermal mathematical models established in various software formats sizes and content of the models, in particular automatic generation of reduced models from the detailed models uncertainties definitions of thermal interfaces The lessons learned from the thermal testing campaigns apply to: selection of test environment, using solar simulation and/or infra-red techniques selection of test cases based on thermal design driving parameters and/or test chamber capabilities adequate instrumentation (i.e. thermocouples, test heaters) for all critical components (un)expected events e.g.

The Crew Refrigerator/Freezer Racks (RFR) are being developed and built at Astrium Friedrichshafen under ESA contract. The RFR will provide conditioned storage volume for astronaut food during transport in the MPLM and on board the ISS. To support the design of the RFR a thermal model has been established at Astrium in the early project phase using the ESATAN software which is the ESA standard thermal analysis tool. This model has been extended to allow full operational simulation of the RFR during a typical mission scenario. For demonstrating the capabilities of EcosimPro, a state of the art tool to address Environmental Control and Life Support analysis, the same model is built up with EcosimPro. The results are validated by comparing them to those from the ESATAN simulation.