The TAI Team is happy to announce (albeit several weeks late) the launch of NASA's Europa Clipper mission. The mission is now on its 1.8 billion-mile journey to Jupiter to survey its moon, Europa. This exciting program will investigate Europa's subsurface ocean to determine if the conditions for life exist there.
TAI provided our Copper-Aluminum Hybrid Copper Thermal Strap (CuTS®) products to the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), to help cool components on their SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) instrument, onboard the satellite. The dual-armed thermal straps (flexible thermal links) were used to remove heat from the FPGAs in SUDA's Remote Electronics Box (REB).
"The SUDA REB FPGA Challenge"
Our portion of the mission started in 2018, with the initial meeting between CU LASP and TAI. LASP needed straps to conduct 0.20 W/K each from the central heat source (FPGAs), to two sinks in the outer edges of the electronics boxes. However, what made the program particularly challenging was the need to have no more than 10g (but a goal of 5g) of mass mounted to the FPGA (the center of the strap) while conducting more heat than an equivalent aluminum foil strap is capable of—with a total mass of less than 50g. To top it off, all of this had to be achieved by a strap solution that was a fraction of the cost of graphite and graphene-based thermal straps. This made TAI's Hybrid Cu-Al thermal straps the perfect solution for SUDA.
Pictured: 5 of the Flight Model (FM) Cu-Al Hybrid Thermal Straps ready to ship to CU LASP in 2020.
By using Al 6061 end fittings with our OFHC UltraFlex™ I copper cables, the design team at TAI was able to deliver a strap solution that met all requirements and came in well under the total mass requirement (at just a tiny fraction of the cost of graphite/graphene-based thermal straps, or any other commercially-available swaged metallic thermal straps).
While our graphite-based products typically offer 3-6x the thermal performance of an equivalent or similarly-sized copper-cabled thermal strap (at 100K - 400K), certain tradeoffs and design considerations can limit their conductance (such as the end fitting design, distance from the graphite to the source and sink, total length of the strap vs flexible portion length, etc.). In these cases, our Hybrid CuTS® can often come close to or match the performance of a graphite strap—at just a small mass penalty—but for a fraction of the NRE and unit costs.
Hybrid CuTS® Space Flight Heritage
While this was a success for TAI and LASP, it culminated in a milestone moment for TAI 6 weeks ago, as this is the first satellite to launch using our Hybrid CuTS®—that we can disclose publicly—confirming the product's flight heritage and NASA TRL 9 status (though our all-copper CuTS® have extensive flight heritage going back over a decade)!
Even more exciting to report: Airbus will be launching it's Proba-3 satellite in just 8 days, sending another set of our Hybrid CuTS® into orbit (with many other programs scheduled for launch in 2025—stay tuned for updates).
NASA's Europa Clipper Mission
"Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life.
This animation shows NASA’s Europa Clipper during a flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The mission’s three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will perform dozens of close flybys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to investigate the moon. The spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter, will make nearly 50 flybys of Europa at closest-approach altitudes as low as 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the surface, soaring over a different location during each flyby to scan nearly the entire moon."
Credit: https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/about/
To learn more about the Europa Clipper Mission, visit NASA's mission page, here: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/
The TAI Team is thrilled to be a part of this important mission and it was a pleasure working with our friends at CU LASP!