A Passive, Compact, Rechargeable Low-Temperature CryoCooler

Numerous applications exist where cooling is desired for sensors, for only a small portion of the entire spacecraft orbit. These burst power requirements may also be coupled with a requirement to have no vibration during this data gathering period. This problem is often further complicated by the fact that the cooling temperatures are typically cryogenic. Such cryocooling requirements are typically in the range of 10 to 180 K. Mainstream has developed an innovative approach which can provide passive cooling in this range with active system recharge and the overall specific capacity is in the range of 200 to 570 Watt-Minutes per Pound! Phase I will provide experimental verification of this innovative approach and experimentally derived Hard Numbers to support the cooling capacity per unit mass claims in this proposal. The development of a simple, rechargeable, vibration-free, lightweight, compact cooling device (for temperature ranges of 10-180K) has tremendous government and commercial spacecraft applications. In addition there are commercial applications wherever specialty gasses such as liquid nitrogen are used for cooling. Therefore the commercial applications would extend to the thousands of commercial users of liquid nitrogen and other gases which are consumed for cooling in laboratory, medical, and industrial applications.