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Design and flight performance of a space borne helium-3 refrigerator for the infrared telescope in space.

Author(s) : FREUND M. M., DUBAND L., LANGE A. E., MATSUMOTO T., MURAKAMI H., HIRAO T., SATO S.

Type of article: Article

Summary

The authors report the design, space-qualification and flight performance of a helium-3 refrigerator that has achieved the first sub-kelvin temperatures in orbit. The refrigerator has been used to cool the bolometric detectors of the Far Infrared Photometer on the Infrared Telescope in Space. The refrigerator has no moving parts, and can be recycled indefinitely in zero-g with higher than 95% duty cycle using simple control electronics. It provides 10 microwatts of cooling power at T less than 310 milliK with no higher than 2 milliwatt average power dissipation to a 2.0 K heat sink for about 10 days.

Details

  • Original title: Design and flight performance of a space borne helium-3 refrigerator for the infrared telescope in space.
  • Record ID : 1999-2683
  • Languages: English
  • Source: Cryogenics - vol. 38 - n. 4
  • Publication date: 1998/04

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