Advanced Cooling Technologies Selected as Key Thermal Management Supplier for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
February 19th 2020: Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. has been awarded a contract from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for engineering development and flight hardware manufacturing of Constant Conductance Heat Pipes (CCHPs) and an Embedded Warm Radiator Panel, which will fly as part of the Coronagraph Instrument, which is an instrument on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. ACT will be the prime thermal management supplier for the Electronics Heat Transport Subsystem (EHTS); the scope of work includes design, fabrication and qualification of several external CCHPs and an aluminum-honeycomb embedded CCHP radiator panel. All deliverables will be provided to JPL by March 2022.
This project is particularly exciting due to the legacy it carries; the Roman Space Telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, who paved the way for space telescopes focused on the broader universe. She was instrumental (pun intended) in the advocacy and development of new tools that would allow scientists to study the broader universe from space. According to NASA the Roman Telescope will achieve some remarkable feats, including:
- The ability to investigate long-standing astronomical mysteries, such as the force behind the universe’s expansion by studying dark energy
- Capabilities to reveal thousands of worlds that are similar to planets in our solar system, by utilizing gravitational effects called microlensing
The Roman Telescope will feature a Wide Field Instrument and Coronagraph Instrument. The Wide Field Instrument will have a field of view that is 100 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument, allowing it to capture more of the sky with less observing time. The Coronagraph Instrument will perform high contrast imaging and spectroscopy of individual nearby exoplanets.
As the primary thermal management solutions provider, ACT will leverage its extensive aerospace engineering and aluminum-ammonia heat pipe expertise to qualify and deliver flight article CCHPs and the embedded CCHP radiator. ACT’s ammonia CCHPs have recently exceeded 50 million on-orbit hours and have never recorded an on-orbit failure. The existing robust manufacturing and quality control will be heavily leveraged during the execution of this contract.
The contract has generated significant excitement at ACT- “We’re thrilled anytime we have the opportunity to work with NASA JPL, but there is added excitement to support a program as important as the Roman Space Telescope” said Bryan Muzyka, Manager, Sales & Marketing. “This will give ACT and our supply chain the opportunity to innovate and be part of a truly special project” added John Hartenstine, Vice President of Operations at ACT.
Information related to the Roman Space Telescope was found at https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope
Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) is a premier thermal management solutions company, providing design and manufacturing services to meet our customers’ needs across all points of the product lifecycle since 2003. We serve our customers’ thermal management and energy recovery needs in diverse Markets including Defense, Aerospace, Electronics, HVAC, Medical, Enclosure Cooling and Calibration Equipment. With the expertise of an industry leader and the agility of a small company, we specialize in providing performance and cost-optimized thermal management technologies and solutions that meet the unique needs of each customer.
Learn more about ACT’s spacecraft thermal control products.