Vega fourth stage thermal control design and verification by test
- Paper number
IAC-06-C2.7.10
- Author
Mr. Francesco Fratoni, ELV S.p.A, Italy
- Coauthor
Mrs. Claudia Di Trapani, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Attilio Cretella, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Antonio Pizzicaroli, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Nicola Ierardo, Italy
- Year
2006
- Abstract
VEGA is a launch vehicle constituted by four stages and dedicated to the scientific/commercial market of small satellites (300 to 2500 kg) into circular Low Earth Orbits with inclinations ranging from 5.2° up to Sun Synchronous Orbits and with altitude ranging from 300 to 1500 km. The launch vehicle configuration employs solid rocket motors for the first, second and third stage and a hydrazine-liquid oxygen Liquid Propulsion System for the fourth stage (AVUM – Attitude Vernier Upper Module). One of the most critical design task is to guarantee a suitable thermal environment for the equipments (on board computer, thrust – vector control sub-system, etc.) and for the stored propellant, which are housed in the upper stage, protecting them by solar radiation, aero – thermal fluxes and, during fourth stage propelled phase, by the radiation of the engine’s exhaust plume. To achieve the thermal control a Multi – Layer Insulation (MLI) has been designed to protect the most critical areas (fuel and oxidizer tanks and gas tank) from the thermal fluxes radiated by the nozzle and the plume. In the frame of the qualification campaign of the AVUM Main Engine, the MLI thermal protection will be tested in its most critical configuration. The test has the aims to verify the behaviour of the thermal protection configuration and to validate the design parameters of the MLI itself, to be employed in the launch vehicle ESATAN-ESARAD thermal mathematical model. With this scope the ESATAN-ESARAD test prediction model has been built with the same approach of the flight one, but taking into account the specific environmental effects. In this paper the correlation between experimental results and predictions achieved by models will be illustrated.
- Abstract document