Passive radiative cooling of a HTS coil for attitude orbit control in micro-spacecraft

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel radiative cooling system for a high temperature superconducting (HTS) coil for an attitude orbit control system in nano- and micro-spacecraft missions. These days, nano-spacecraft (1–10kg) and micro-spacecraft (10–100kg) provide space access to a broader range of spacecraft developers and attract interest as space development applications. In planetary and high earth orbits, most previous standard-size spacecraft used thrusters for their attitude and orbit control, which are not available for nano- and micro-spacecraft missions because of the strict power consumption, space, and weight constraints. This paper considers orbit and attitude control methods that use a superconducting coil, which interacts with on-orbit space plasmas and creates a propulsion force. Because these spacecraft cannot use an active cooling system for the superconducting coil because of their mass and power consumption constraints, this paper proposes the utilization of a passive radiative cooling system, in which the superconducting coil is thermally connected to the 3K cosmic background radiation of deep space, insulated from the heat generation using magnetic holders, and shielded from the sun. With this proposed cooling system, the HTS coil is cooled to 60K in interplanetary orbits. Because the system does not use refrigerators for its cooling system, the spacecraft can achieve an HTS coil with low power consumption, small mass, and low cost.