Services
Thermotive is ready and eager to help you achieve and exceed your design and engineering goals. Thermotive offers thermomechanical technology development and thermal control system design, analysis, and component vacuum testing.
For devices operating in vacuum environments, Thermotive offers standardized and custom thermal strap and interface design, fabrication, cleaning, and vacuum testing. We can help design a thermal control system to meet your needs. Where thermoelectric cooling is appropriate, Thermotive sizes and selects devices and control systems while also performing structural bonding, sensor attachment, and thermal vacuum performance characterization.
From conception to fabrication, Thermotive offers services in:
- Design, fabrication, and testing of aluminum, copper and pyrolytic graphite thermal straps
- Integrated and characterized thermoelectric thermal straps
- Design and implementation of thermal control systems
- Design, ambient, or vacuum testing of prototypes
- Computational thermal and mechanical analysis
Research & Development
Thermotive also actively engages in research and product development in aerospace instrument thermal control.
Some key areas of interest include:
- Advanced flexible thermal staps -- lighter, more conductive, more flexible, cleaner
- Deployable passive radiators for instruments and small satellites such as Cubesats
- Deployable solar panels for Cube and Nanosats
- Innovative heat switch designs
- Phase Change Material (PCM) energy storage - Hydrocarbon-based with high heat of fusion. These devices stabilize orbital temperatures of pulsed operation instruments or components.
Thermal & Mechanical Engineering published contributions by Eugenio "Keno" Urquiza at JPL-NASA/CalTech
PRISM (Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer) SPIE Paper -- JPL-NASA/CalTech
PRISM - Results from first flight and testing -- JPL-NASA/CalTech
PRISM Slides (Public Release) --- (JPL website source)
Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES) -- (JPL website source)
Thermotive Technology Development: Ongoing and stemming from previous work at JPL-NASA/CalTech:
Ongoing research into small-scale deployable radiators for space flight instruments and Cube-Sats.
Folding Elastic Thermal Surface (FETS), published in NASA Tech Briefs. FETS developed for passive cooling on the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer (MATMOS)
Two Arm Flexible Thermal Strap (TAFTS) for focal plane cooling, was published in the Journal of Cryogenics.
TAFTS in NASA Tech Briefs
Published contributions by Eugenio "Keno" Urquiza at UC Berkeley: