Analytical Study of a Cryogenic Thermal Control Coating

This study focuses on the analysis of a cryogenic thermal control coating designed to reflect most of the Sun’s irradiance while emitting long wavelength radiation, thus enabling propulsion systems to maintain cryogenic temperatures while in deep space. This “solar white” coating is composed of yttrium oxide (Y2O3) which has properties that are well-suited for cryogenic propellant storage applications. To conduct proof of concept and material development, many tests have been run at both NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Glenn Research Center (GRC) to demonstrate the performance of the coating in the cryogenic regime in both powder and ceramic forms. At GRC, the Deep Space Solar Simulator (DS3) was used to run thermal vacuum tests where the coating was exposed to a deep space environment (~10 K) with some tests conducted under the illumination of a solar lamp.

Using the test data, a thermal model of the DS3 test setup was developed to correlate the test results to predict the optical properties of the coating. Once the optical properties were determined, an additional thermal model, based on previous work by R.C. Young quist et al., was developed to verify the performance of a theoretical lunar, cryogenic propellant depot. The latter thermal model also demonstrates the usage of the HLS-UG-001 Human Landing System Lunar Thermal Analysis Guidebook published to baseline Artemis-related lunar studies.