This topic covers thermal vacuum (TVAC) testing of a spacecraft and/or its subsystems. TVAC testing is the most realistic thermal simulation of the flight environment. For this reason, this testing is critical to ensuring mission success and can not be replaced by ambient pressure thermal testing. During a TVAC test, hardware is subjected to a number of hot-cold cycles in a vacuum environment and system performance is verified through functional tests which are carried out at temperature plateaus.
Resources under this topic include standard testing thresholds/requirements, guidance for developing and operating a TVAC chamber, and example test reports.
Only conducting thermal testing at ambient pressure often yields significantly unrealistic results. Always conduct at least one hot-cold TVAC cycle at the spacecraft-level and with comprehensive functional testing.
Always bond thermistors to the hardware under test using a robust, thermally conductive bonding compound. Test are often delayed or invalidated due to improperly attached test instrumentation which becomes detached.
Thermistor wires can create thermal bridges between components. Take special care when routing and affixing test instrumentation to avoid influencing results.
Ensure that all bolts are torqued per their flight specification. This is to ensure that the thermal gradients across bolted interfaces are as flight-like as possible.
This conference paper describes thermal modeling of a smallsat and correlation to thermal vacuum (TVAC) ... test data. While dated, it is a useful case study for smallsat developers. It includes a complete description of the inputs and methods for modeling, analysis, and correlation to test data.
This page in the NASA Public Lessons Learned System recommends that thermal vacuum tests follow dynamics ... tests (e.g. vibration testing). It provides detailed guidance and motivation for this recommendation.
This book chapter, titled "Thermal Design" covers thermal design, analysis, and testing for LEO satellites. ... This includes background on the physics of heat transfer, thermal control hardware, and processes for thermal design, analysis, and testing. Note that this chapter is only 13 pages, and does not go into significant detail on any of the included topics.
This chapter titled "Thermal Testing" is a comprehensive reference regarding thermal testing of space ... flight hardware. The tests covered are thermal cycling (ambient pressure), thermal vacuum, thermal balance, and burn-in. It includes a description of the elements and stages of the traditional approach, environments, margins, requirements, and required equipment/facilitates.
Cost and schedule pressures that becoming more often a part of smallsat development has led many developers ... to debate the costs and benefits of thermal vacuum testing. This resource takes a deeper dive into this question to determine just how valuable thermal vacuum testing is.
This conference paper documents environmental testing performed on a 120kg university smallsat. It covers ... EMC testing, vibration testing, and thermal/vacuum testing. This resource provides valuable information to inform environmental testing of other smallsats, including theoretical background, test conditions, photos, diagrams, and experimental data.
Thermal-vacuum cycling tests are necessary for evaluating the survivability of a satellite in the harsh ... thermal environment of space. The objective of this resource is to deliver and establish a set of "comprehensive and coherent thermal-vacuum specifications." Detailed specification and process is provided throughout.
Thermal-vacuum testing is critical to ensuring satellite reliability and survivability. Unfortunately, ... many thermal-vacuum chambers are much larger than necessary for small satellites, resulting in an unnecessary cost burden for developers. This paper seeks to outline the methodology for developing thermal-vacuum chambers for testing small satellites.
These slides are a summary of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center's (MSFC's) thermal vacuum testing philosophy. ... The slides cover general concepts followed by an example of how a box would be tested at MSFC.
This site provides a high-level overivew, lessons learned, and recommendations related to thermal vacuum ... (T/V) testing. A NASA JPL study with a summary of analysis and test results is provided as an example when thermal/atmospheric (T/A) testing is performed instead of T/V testing.
In this report, risk perspectives of Class C and Class D (moderate and high-risk) programs are discussed ... and aligned with mission success expectations. Thermal test recommendations to achieve desired test effectiveness goals are provided along with the associated risks resulting from tailored thermal test parameters. Beyond providing cost-effective thermal test requirements applicable to many smallsat missions, this document provides extremely valuable context and data to support its recommendations and enable a detailed understanding of each test.
This standard provides environmental and structural ground testing requirements for space hardware. This ... is a very comprehensive and traditional requirements document not appropriate for determining requirements for most smallsat projects; however, it provides definitions, baseline requirements, and specific methodologies for each type of test and can serve as a valuable reference to inform smallsat testing. This section titled "Unit Thermal Vacuum Test" provides thermal vacuum test requirements and related information.
This handbook provides in-depth guidance on testing of space vehicles. This is a dated but comprehensive ... source of space hardware test environments and processes that could be used to inform test planning and execution for smallsat projects. This section covers thermal vacuum testing of space vehicles.