Performance Evaluation of Double-condenser Loop Heat Pipe Onboard Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) in Thermal Vacuum Testing 2005-01-2939

The thermal performance of the Loop Heat Pipe Radiator System (LHPRS) has been verified in the thermal vacuum testing. LHPRS is used as the heat transport system to reject heat from the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). Since this LHPRS was designed exclusively for the MAXI system, it has two-condensers in parallel connected to a common evaporator. Since it is possible that the heat transportation deviates to one condenser only, it had to be investigated how the double condensers affect the LHPRS performance under various conditions. Thermal vacuum testing was conducted for the engineering model of the MAXI/LHPRS. In this paper, the test result and performance verification of the MAXI/LHPRS are described.