A thermal balance test prediction for a geostationary satellite

The Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) is the next European family of weather satellites born under the cooperation on meteorological missions between the European Space Agency and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). OHB AG was given the task to develop part of the satellite platform and an innovative payload, the InfraRed Sounder (IRS), which shall provide an increased accuracy in the temperature and humidity measurements, with respect to the actual state of the art of the weather satellites. Moreover, the IRS will introduce several improvements on the detection of the major air pollutants. The development of the IRS includes the veri cation of the Thermal Control System (TCS) to be performed within a test campaign, that has to be designed and simulated with the aid of appropriate softwares before its physical execution. Part of this test campaign is the Thermal Balance Test (TBT), that will be executed in Noordwijk, Holland, inside of the Large Space Simulator (LSS), a test chamber part of the ESA thermal testing facilities. The work of this thesis is the design and prediction of the Thermal Balance Test, which has as objectives the correlation of the Thermal Mathematical Model (TMM) with the physical model of the instrument, and the veri cation of the TCS suitability. Chapter 1 presents a review of the most common techniques and devices for the thermal control, while in Chapter 2 a brief introduction to the ESA de ned standard software for thermal analysis, ESATAN-TMS, is given. A basic knowledge of the IRS, useful to the comprehension of the thesis work, is provided in Chapter 3, focusing on the main characteristics of the thermal control architecture. Afterwards, Chapter 5 introduces the reader to the LSS, providing a description of its most important features. Chapter 6 explains the preparation work, by describing the set up of the test con guration. Core of the thesis is the description of the test phases, presented and analyzed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 concludes the thesis work giving an outlook on the criticalities encountered and the open points left for the future developers of the Thermal Balance Test.