Thermal management contract for NASA's VIPER mission won by ACT
NewsSeptember 09, 2021
LANCASTER, Pa. NASA has awarded Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) a $3.7 million contract to finalize the design and fabricate the flight thermal control system for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER).
VIPER, an important part of the Artemis program, is a golf cart-sized rover that will roam several miles across the South Pole of the Moon to get a close-up view of the location and concentration of ice during its approximately 100-day mission.
Officials claim the thermal control system developed jointly by ACT and NASA will be the first to maintain operation for a 100-day mission while in shadowed conditions. For this ACT will deliver a combination of high-performance, passive thermal technologies specifically designed to meet the challenges associated with a long-term lunar mission.
In addition to the flight articles, ACT will be providing system and sub-system level thermal analysis, verification, and thermal testing in coordination with the teams at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
