Thermal Control System to Easily Cool the GAPS Balloon-borne Instrument on the Ground

TL;DR

This paper presents a practical ground cooling system for the GAPS balloon experiment's detectors, enabling pre-flight testing by simulating space-like cooling conditions on the ground.

Contribution

A novel, simple ground cooling system (GCS) for pre-flight detector cooling in balloon-borne experiments is developed and validated through thermal testing.

Findings

GCS effectively cools detectors to below -40°C on the ground.

The design is adaptable and provides guidelines for insulation and cooling.

Thermal tests confirm the system's practicality and effectiveness.

Abstract

This study developed a novel thermal control system to cool detectors of the General AntiParticle Spectrometer (GAPS) before its flights. GAPS is a balloon-borne cosmic-ray observation experiment. In its payload, GAPS contains over 1000 silicon detectors that must be cooled below $-40^{\circ}\mbox{C}$. All detectors are thermally coupled to a unique heat-pipe system (HPS) that transfers heat from the detectors to a radiator. The radiator is designed to be cooled below $-50^{\circ}\mbox{C}$ during the flight by exposure to space. The pre-flight state of the detectors is checked on the ground at 1 atm and ambient room temperature, but the radiator cannot be similarly cooled. The authors have developed a ground cooling system (GCS) to chill the detectors for ground testing. The GCS consists of a cold plate, a chiller, and insulating foam. The cold plate is designed to be attached to the radiator and cooled by a coolant pumped by the chiller. The payload configuration, including the HPS, can be the same as that of the flight. The GCS design was validated by thermal tests using a scale model. The GCS design is simple and provides a practical guideline, including a simple estimation of appropriate thermal insulation thickness, which can be easily adapted to other applications.