Numerical study on the thermal design of on-board blackbody

On-board blackbody is used for radiation temperature calibration of spaceborne IR radiometers and imaging systems. The thermal design of blackbody proposed in this study consists of heaters to heat-up the blackbody during the calibration, heat pipe to transfer residual heat on the blackbody just after calibration to radiator on the spacecraft and heaters on the radiator to keep the certain temperature range of the blackbody during non-calibration. The effectiveness of thermal design of on-board blackbody has been investigated by on-orbit thermal analysis. Two types of blackbody with different heat pipe installation have also been proposed and numerically investigated to verify which design is more applicable for on-board blackbody.