Thermal Technology Advancements for Extended-Duration Lunar Operation

This paper describes ten innovations to enable multi-day/night operability/survivability of lunar instruments/systems. Extended-duration lunar operation is highly challenging due to the 50-100 K temperatures during the (15 Earth day) lunar night and the 350-400 K temperatures (at low-to-mid latitudes) during the (15 Earth day) lunar day. The ten thermal innovations described herein include: (1) thermally-switched enclosures (TSE); (2) parabolic reflector radiators (PRR); (3) spacerless MLI (SMLI); (4) low conductance thermal isolators (LCTI); (5) reverse-operation DTE thermal switches (ROD-TSW); (6) extended duration ROD-TSW (ES-ROD-TSW); (7) miniaturized ROD-TSW (mini-ROD-TSW); (8) miniaturized loop heat pipes (mini-LHP); (9) Vectran tension cables (VTC); and (10) lunar magnetometer thermal enclosures (LMTE). These ten innovations were developed at JPL under the PALETTE, ARTEMIS, and ROD-TSW projects. PALETTE is funded by NASA GCD, while ARTEMIS/ROD-TSW were funded by JPL. Also described herein are several lunar mission infusion opportunities including two that are already manifested (FSS, LuSEE-night) and a few that could eventually be developed/flown (LCRT, LGN, LTV, et. al).