Thermal Design of Blackbody for On-Board Calibration of Spaceborne Infrared Imaging Sensor

In this study, we propose a thermal design for an on-board blackbody (BB) for spaceborne infrared (IR) sensor calibration. The main function of the on-board BB is to provide highly uniform and precise radiation temperature reference sources from 0 °C to 40 °C during the calibration of the IR sensor....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAerospace Vol. 9; no. 5; p. 268
Main Authors Kim, Hye-In, Chae, Bong-Geon, Choi, Pil-Gyeong, Jo, Mun-Shin, Lee, Kyoung-Muk, Oh, Hyun-Ung
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.05.2022
Subjects
Blackbody
Calibration
Deformation
Design
fail-safe function
Heat conductivity
heat pipe
Heat pipes
Heaters
Infrared imaging
infrared sensor
non-uniformity correction
Pipes
Radiation
Radiators
Sensors
Surface temperature
Temperature
Temperature gradients
Temperature sensors
Thermal analysis
Thermal design
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Summary:In this study, we propose a thermal design for an on-board blackbody (BB) for spaceborne infrared (IR) sensor calibration. The main function of the on-board BB is to provide highly uniform and precise radiation temperature reference sources from 0 °C to 40 °C during the calibration of the IR sensor. To meet the functional requirements of BB, a BB thermal design using a heater to heat the BB during sensor calibration and heat pipes to transfer residual heat to the radiator after calibration is proposed and investigated both numerically and experimentally. The main features of the proposed thermal design are a symmetric temperature gradient on the BB surface with less than 1 K temperature uniformity, ease of temperature sensor implementation to estimate the representative surface temperature of the BB, a stable thermal interface between the heat pipes and BB, and a fail-safe function under one heat pipe failure. The thermal control performance of the BB is investigated via in-orbit thermal analysis, and its effectiveness is verified via a heat-up test of the BB under ambient conditions. These results indicate that the temperature gradient on the BB surface was obtained at less than 1 K, and the representative surface temperature could be estimated with an accuracy of 0.005 °C via the temperature sensor.
ISSN:2226-4310
2226-4310
DOI:10.3390/aerospace9050268