Cooling satelites in space?

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

From: Michael Geluardi (geluardi@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Feb 03 2005 - 06:46:20 PST 

Message-ID: <20050203144621.5128.qmail@web51310.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 06:46:20 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Geluardi <geluardi@yahoo.com>
Subject: Cooling satelites in space?

Hello,

I have a question about space satellite design. I understand that despite the
super low temperatures in space, satelites actually have a problem with
overheating because without air, they can't lose heat by conduction or
convection. They are stuck with radiative heat loss as the only mechanism to
cool off. Furthermore, with the intense radiation above the atomosphere, they
are subject to a lot of radiative warming and their electronics generate heat
too.

I'd like to pose an engineering problem to my students but figure I ought to
understand the answer first. What kind of design features do satelites use to
thermoregulate properly? They are often covered in some sort of foil. Is part
of the idea here to reduce warming by radiative absorbtion? I wonder, are the
backs of the solar arrays black? This would increase cooling by radiative
emission on a part of the satelite that isn't exposed to the sun but I wonder
if they are actually designed this way.

Cheers,
Mike Geluardi

        
                
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Aug 01 2005 - 16:06:46 PDT