Thermal Design and Optimization of Heat Pipe Radiator for Satellites

Satellite＇s thermal control subsystem （TCS） has to maintain components and structure within their specified temperature limits during satellite service life. TCS designers have to face the challenge of reducing both the weight of the system and required heater power while keeping components temperature within their design range. For a space based heat pipe radiator system, several researchers have published different approaches to reach such goal. This paper presents a thermal design and optimization of a heat pipe radiator applied to a practical engineering design application. For this study, a prospective communication satellite payload panel with applied passive thermal control techniques was considered. The thermal passive techniques used in this design mainly include multilayer insulation （MLI） blankets, optical solar reflectors （OSR）, selected thermal coatings, interface fillers and constant conductance heat pipes. The heat pipe network is comprised of some heat pipes embedded in the panel and some mounted on inner surface of the panel. Embedded heat pipes are placed under high heat dissipation equipments and their size is fixed; minimum weight of the radiator is achieved by a minimum weight of the mounted heat pipes. Hence, size of the mounted heat pipes is optimized. A thermal model was built and parameterized for transient thermal analysis and optimization. Temperature requirements of components in both worst case conditions （Hot case and cold case） were satisfied under optimal sizing of mounted heat pipes.

Thermal omens before earthquakes

The calefacient phenomenon in the vicinity of the epicenter before an earthquake has observed. It shows that ther exists some abnormal information of heat radiation in the seismogenic zone. It might be helpful to open up a new research field of survey the hot omen of earthquake and to improve the capability of earthquake prediction by using the satellite remote sensing technology.

Satellite detection of increases in global land surface evapotranspiration during 1984-2007

As a key component of digital earth,remotely sensed data provides the compelling evidence that the amount of water vapour transferred from the entire global surface to the atmosphere increased from 1984 to 2007.The validation results from the earlier evapotranspiration(ET)estimation algorithm based on net radiation(Rn),Normalised Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI),air temperature and diurnal air temperature range(DTaR)showed good agreement between estimated monthly ET and ground-measured ET from 20 flux towers.Our analysis indicates that the estimated actual ET has increased on average over the entire global land surface except for Antarctica during 1984
2007.However,this increasing trend disappears after 2000 and the reason may be that the decline in net radiation and NDVI during this period depleted surface soil moisture.Moreover,the good correspondence between the precipitation trend and the change in ET in arid and semi-arid regions indicated that surface moisture linked to precipitation affects ET.The input parameters Rn,Tair,NDVI and DTaR show substantial spatio-temporal variability that is almost consistent with that of actual ET from 1984 to 2007 and contribute most significantly to the variation in actual ET.

Investigation of electrons inside the satellite by the Geant4 simulation

The measurement of the electron radiation inside the satellite is important for engineering and space environment researches.The particle radiation detectors (PRD) on board CBERS-1 and CBERS-2 made great contribution to understanding of the space environment.Then,what is the radiation relationship between inside and outside the satellite? The Monte Carlo simula-tion with Geant4 was implemented to study the problem.The boundaries of the energy bins of 0.5 and 2 MeV were precisely corresponding to outside energies of 0.99 and 2.52 MeV,respectively.Besides the changes of the energy bins,the fluxes inside were smaller than those of the corresponding bins outside.The spectrum inside the satellite was harder than that outside.An indicator was that the flux ratio of the high energy bin to the low energy bin increased more than 20% from outside to inside.The geometric factor (GF) relates to the incident energy of electrons.By using the AE-8 model to derive the incident spec-trum,the GFs of the low and high energy bins were 1.15 and 0.70 cm2 sr,respectively.GF of the low energy bin was larger than that of the high energy bin.But they were both smaller than the previous results.It was due to the scattering,straggle and shielding effects.

Assimilation of Global Navigation Satellite Radio Occultation Observations in GRAPES:Operational Implementation

This paper presents the design of an observation operator for assimilation of global navigation satellite system（GNSS） radio occultation（RO） refractivity and the related operational implementation strategy in the global GRAPES variational data assimilation system.A preliminary assessment of the RO data assimilation effect is performed.The results show that the RO data are one of the most important observation types in GRAPES,as they have a significant positive impact on the analysis and forecast at all ranges,especially in the Southern Hemisphere and the global stratosphere where in-situ measurements are lacking.The GRAPES model error cannot be controlled in the Southern Hemisphere without RO data being assimilated.In addition,it is found that the RO data play a key role in the stable running of the GRAPES global assimilation and forecast system.Even in a relatively simple global data assimilation experiment,in which only the conventional and RO data are assimilated,the system is able to run for more than nine months without drift compared with NCEP analyses.The analysis skills in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are still relatively comparable even after nine-month integration,especially in the stratosphere where the number of conventional observations decreases and RO observations with a uniform global coverage dominate gradually.

Aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions:A challenging problem in regional environment and climate research

Aerosols affect clouds in two broad ways： （i） presence of more number of aerosols leads to formation of more smaller droplets, and reduces coalescence, resulting in brighter clouds that reflect more solar energy back to space, hence they contribute to cooling of the Earth＇s surface and （ii） numerous smaller cloud droplets tend to reduce precipitation and change the extent of cloud cover and increase cloud lifetime and albedo. One of our recent studies on aerosols over the lndo-Gangetic Plains （IGP） relative to the pristine oceans to the south of Indian Ocean showed that highly absorbing aerosols could potentially lead to the revival of active condition preceded by long break. The absorption of solar radiation by aerosols such as black carbon and desert dust produces surface cooling and local stabilization of lower atmosphere. This stability effect is overcome by the enhanced moisture convergence due to the meridional gradient of aerosol-induced heating. In some other studies, we showed association between cloud thickness and cloud to sub-cloud ratio （SCR）, aerosol variability （in terms of aerosol optical depth and aerosol index） and monsoon precipitation and climate over regional scale. This paper provides an overview of some salient results that have been obtained from the studies conducted, using the ground- and space-based active and passive remote sensing techniques, at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology （IITM）, Pune, India in the recent decade.