Peregrine, in collaboration with its Aerospace customer, undertook a design, manufacture and testing contract to produce a set of shunt resistor bank heater plates for a satellite application. Specific to this application, is the requirement to dissipate 900 Watts of thermal energy into space. Due to the environment of space, this thermal load had to…

The XMM Newton Satellite carries three telescopes to measure x-rays generated from extremely violent events from distant celestial objects.  The XMM Satellite has been placed in a highly eccentric orbit reaching about one third of the distance to the moon, allowing the telescopes and detectors to operate unencumbered from the earth’s atmosphere with unprecedented sensitivity.…

Nuclear Metals of Concord, Massachusetts requested that Peregrine assist in developing processes in parallel with their casting development of beryllium aluminum alloys. Primarily the interest of Nuclear Metals was for Peregrine to develop and confirm that the processes involved with attaching mechanical fasteners/ threaded inserts, adhesive bonding, and the ability to press and shrink fit…

  At times, under certain medical conditions, it is important to control the overall temperature of the body. By lowering the temperature, there are certain medical advantages in order to slow down the recovery rate or response rate from a patient. This is done by inserting a catheter within the central venous system of the…

Our people assisted with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Units (AMSU-A & B) space flight instruments, which were multi-channel passive microwave radiometers that measured global atmospheric temperature profiles from the advanced TIROS-N spacecraft. Aerojet Electronic Systems (now Northrop Grumman) was responsible for the delivery of the AMSU-A to NASA / NOAA. The AMSU-A system provides information…

The ORBCOMM Constellation required the launching of multiple satellites in a single launch. The launches were planned on Pegasus and it was anticipated that eight satellites at a time would be launched. Figure 1 shows the eight satellites stacked upon each other ready to be loaded onto the Pegasus launch vehicle. Due to this launch…

Peregrine provided, manufactured and tested an enabling design which was a Radiative Coupler. The purpose of this device was to transport thermal energy from a sensor “on” gimbal to an “off” gimbal radiator. Typically, problems exist with the dissipation of thermal energy from a sensor that is located on a gimbaled system. In space where…

The Gas Gap Thermal Switch was a successful assembly designed and fabricated by the Peregrine Falcon Corporation for NASA and flown on the Space Transportation System on board the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95). The Gas Gap Thermal Switch is presented in Figure 2 below. The switch operates by transferring or isolating a thermal load from…

This innovation replaces the actively cooled thermal control system used in the SSADT program with a passive cooling solution that significantly improves system reliability while maintaining equivalent thermal performance. The old existing active cooling design contains more than 3,000 potential leak points, creating a substantial risk of coolant reaching the critical GaN MMIC devices and…

Peregrine developed an advanced Multi-Layer Metal Insulation (MLMI) technology to provide the exceptional thermal isolation required for long-life, high-performance 8-Watt Radioisotope Heater Unit (RHU) power systems. The isolation design achieves an effective thermal conductivity below 0.001 W/mK by utilizing multiple thin metallic radiation shields separated by high vacuum, eliminating conductive and convective heat transfer between…

Peregrine’s Pulsating Heat Pipe (PHP) technology was applied to an Isothermal Radiator (IRT) design to dramatically improve heat transport for space nuclear power systems and other high-power spacecraft applications. By increasing the effective thermal conductivity of radiator structures to well over 1,000 W/mK, the technology distributes heat more uniformly across the radiating surface, creating a…

The Mercury Target Holder at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a mission-critical, fracture-critical component for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), where the reliability of the target assembly directly impacts facility availability. Historical target failures have been attributed to fabrication and weld defects that were not effectively identified using existing non-destructive examination (NDE) and non-destructive…

Our beryllium X-ray windows are manufactured as precision, vacuum-tight assemblies designed to provide high X-ray transmission while withstanding demanding thermal and mechanical operating conditions. These assemblies typically consists of a high-purity OFHC copper bodies with stainless steel ends most with integrated internal cooling passages that are metallurgically joined to form leak-tight structures. High-purity (99%) beryllium…

Peregrine has developed an advanced thermal management design for high-altitude High Energy Laser (HEL) platforms capable of supporting a 1 MW laser operating above 55,000 ft, where approximately 3 MW of continuous waste heat—and up to 60–120 MJ of thermal energy during individual firing events—must be rapidly dissipated to maintain laser diode performance and reliability.…