Conveners
C3OrH - Aerospace Sub-Kelvin Cryocoolers
- Joshua West (High Precision Devices, Inc.)
- Franklin Miller (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
PIXIE is a recently proposed middle-class explorer mission designed to produce full-sky maps of polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). PIXIE’s challenging science goals require not only measuring the extremely faint “b-modes” of the CMB, but distinguishing between true CMB signatures and 1) polarized light reflecting off local dust, and 2) signals arising from within the...
Future astronomical instruments will require sub-Kelvin detector temperatures to obtain high sensitivity. In many cases large arrays of detectors will be used, and the associated cooling systems will need performance surpassing the limits of present technologies. NASA is developing a compact cooling system that will lift heat continuously at temperatures below 50 mK and reject it at over 10...
The four 1,280 bolometer detector arrays that will fly on the balloon borne PIPER mission will be cooled by a 4-stage adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR). Two of the three mechanically independent ADR assemblies provide thermal isolation to their salt pills through Kevlar suspensions while the other provides thermal isolation to its salt pill through the use of bellows and Vespel...
We present the current state of development in passive gas-gap heat switches. This type of switch does not require a separate heater to initiate heat transfer but, instead, relies upon the warming of one end due to an intrinsic step in a thermodynamic cycle to raise a getter above a threshold temperature. Above this temperature sequestered gas is released to couple both sides of the switch....
Several next generation space telescopes (Athena, SPICA, …) requires 50 mK cooling to achieve the desired sensitivity. Such low temperature in space is achieved by using cooling chain coupling different coolers for each temperature range. For the lowest temperature stage, several cooling solutions exists including the use of multi stage adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR). This paper...
