The Minus Eighty Degrees Freezer MELFI Fully Operational On Board Of The ISS
- Paper number
IAC-07-A2.6.09
- Author
Dr. Jean Cheganças, EADS Astrium, France
- Coauthor
Mrs. Lina de Parolis, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Awaited by the scientific community since some years already, the first flight unit of the minus eighty degrees freezer MELFI is on board of the ISS since July 2006 and is providing the most important refrigeration capability for Science inside the Station. The in-flight acceptance campaign has demonstrated that the technological choices done during the challenging development were correct. The crew members are enjoying at each utilization operation the very flexible interfaces offered to the users. The cooling Brayton technology used to provide the cold power has been very critical to develop but was finally proven to be very efficient on orbit. The architecture with 4 separate enclosures provides cold storage volumes for all biological experiments requiring temperatures from ambient to -97°C, with a certification for the temperatures commonly used +4°C, -26°C and -80°C. The paper will present first a recall of the project challenges. The results of the commissioning campaign on orbit will be then detailed including the power consumption comparison with ground, the cold temperatures obtained inside the cold volumes and the cooling performance for the samples. Finally, because MELFI mission inside the ISS will be somehow different from the two years missions initially defined, explanations will be given on how MELFI is used while staying on orbit for several years and the adaptations that will be necessary. The new utilisation will be supported also by the second MELFI unit already available at KSC and ready for flight whenever assigned inside one of the remaining Space Shuttle flights before Shuttle retirement. The third flight unit, because no plans exist to have it flying, could be used as spare equipment, as a complement of the spares program. As a conclusion, MELFI is confirming day-by-day to have a very flexible configuration capable of facing multiple kinds of mission profiles. Some of them have already been tested, but some more may still be defined for the future ISS needs, as for example different cold temperatures configurations settings in the different cold volumes.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-A2.6.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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