The following is an excerpt from the STS-63 PRESS KIT with hyperlinks added. For more detailed information see:
Experiment: Cryo System Experiment (CSE)
Customer: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Hughes
Aircraft Corporation
Principal Investigator: Russell Sugimura
(JPL), Sam Russo
(Hughes)
Mission Manager: Susan Olden, Hitchhiker Program,
GSFC
The Cryo System Experiment (CSE) is a space flight experiment conducted by the Hughes Aircraft Co., in a cooperative program with NASA. The overall goal of the CSE is to validate and characterize the on-orbit performance of two thermal management technologies that comprise a hybrid cryogenic system. These thermal management technologies consist of: 1) a new generation, long life, low vibration, 65 K Stirling-cycle cryocooler, and 2) an oxygen diode heat pipe that thermally couples the cryocooler and a cryogenic thermal energy storage device. The experiment is necessary to provide a high confidence zero-gravity database for the design of future cryogenic systems for NASA and military space flight applications.
These technologies promise to satisfy many of the currently defined system performance goals for planned NASA and military space programs. Feasibility of each technology has already been demonstrated in independent R&D ground based laboratory tests. However, questions raised by the scientific community relative to the performance of these components in a zero-gravity environment must be answered before these technologies can be optimized for application to flight systems. The CSE flight experiment is configured to: 1) provide data necessary to resolve performance and design issues, 2) validate capability of the hybrid cooling system to meet future mission requirements, and 3) provide for the high confidence and the design of flight system concepts currently being considered.
During on-orbit operation, test data will be recorded to characterize performance of the technology including 1) oxygen diode heat pipe temperature gradient and transport capacity in steady-state and transient conditions, 2) system vibration levels attributed to the active cryocooler, and 3) integrated, extended operations of the cooling system.
An understanding of the performance of these components in flight is required to develop accurate performance models for designing flight hardware. Key issues to be addressed include: 1) heat pipe transfer capacity and start up behavior, 2) cryocooler mechanical disturbance and cryocooler dynamic balance.
Ground-based life testing of the cryocooler has been initiated at Hughes in support of the experiment and will continue into next year for comparison with flight data.
The flight experiment results will be significant to a number of satellites scheduled for deployment in the late 1990s, for which cryocooler technologies are contemplated, including those in support of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth and Astrophysics Programs.
The Cryo System Experiment illustrates an important type of NASA in-space flight experiment in which a relatively mature system technology is validated to provide the option for subsequent application for future space system development. A successful experiment could be followed by the use of the technology in an operational system.
The world wide web uniform resource locator (URL) for this page is:
http://ranier.oact.hq.nasa.gov/Sensors_page/Cryo/CSE.html