Pulse tube coolers for Meteosat third generation

Cryogenic technology for infrared detection in space

“…The focal planes are cooled to 50–55 K. The LPTC cold finger adopts a coaxial structure, which is convenient for coupling with the focal planes. The LPTC can provide 2.3 W@50 K with a cooling power of 160 W 35 . Another miniature pulse tube cooler (MPTC) produced by Air Liquid was used in the ESA Sentinel-3 mission, and its weight was 2.8 kg.…”

“…By integrating passive isolation dampers and low-frequency drive electronics with an active vibration suppression system, it is possible to achieve a lower vibration level 36 .

Figure 14 Air liquid pulse tube coolers (LPTC) 35 .

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Development of high performance moving-coil linear compressors for space Stirling-type pulse tube cryocoolers

“…In the aerospace field, both moving-coil [9,[12][13][14][15]18,20] and moving-magnet [10,11,15,16,19,21] designs had been attempted. Especially, for the moving-coil design, it avoids open circuit axial forces and torques on the current carrying coil and it is much easier to completely eliminate the radial forces due to the structural features.…”

“…Therefore, the worldwide space industry has been actively seeking means for multiyear cryogenic cooling in space to enable long-life infrared sensors since the 1950s [4,5]. In the process, two types of regenerative cryocoolers, the Stirling cryocooler and the pulse tube cryocooler (PTC) have been studied in great depth in the past three decades and had a wide range of important practical applications to date [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Especially, the PTC, which eliminates any moving mechanical component at the cold end, has further achieved two evident advantages over the Stirling cryocooler: first, any wear-out at the cold end is eliminated, and second, at the cold end both vibration input and electromagnetic interference (EMI) levels are significantly reduced [23][24][25][26][27].…”

“…These noticeable features endow the Oxford-type linear compressors with the remarkable merits of high reliability and long life that have a strong appeal to the space field. During the past three decades, the effectiveness of the Oxford-type linear compressor and its various variants has been verified by a variety of space practices and thus achieved acceptance worldwide for driving space Stirling cryocoolers and SPTCs [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”