Cryogenics & Fluids Home
Stuart Banks , Susan Breon, and Kimberly Shirey
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Cryogenics and Fluids Branch
Code 552
NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Four Sunpower M87N Stirling-cycle cryocoolers will be used to extend the lifetime of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02 (AMS-02) experiment. The cryocoolers will be mounted to the AMS-02 vacuum case using a structure that will thermally and mechanically decouple the cryocooler from the vacuum case while providing compliance to allow force attenuation using a passive balancer system. The cryocooler drive is implemented using a 60 Hz pulse duration modulated square wave. Details of the testing program, mounting assembly and drive scheme are presented.
AMS-02 is a state-of-the-art particle physics detector containing a large superfluid helium-cooled superconducting magnet. Highly sensitive detector plates inside the magnet measure a particle's speed, momentum, charge, and path. The AMS-02 experiment, which will be flown as an attached payload on the International Space Station, will study the properties and origin of cosmic particles and nuclei including antimatter and dark matter.
Two engineering model cryocoolers have been under test at NASA Goddard since November 2001.
Pages 551-557
Cryogenics, Volume 44, Issues 6-8 (June - August 2004)
[2003 Space Cryogenics Workshop,
Edited by M. Larson and W. A. Holmes]