OCO
Orbiting Carbon Observatory
The Space Dynamics Laboratory, under contract to Hamilton Sundstrand and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, designed, manufactured, and tested the cryogenic subsystem for the three focal plane assemblies of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) instrument. OCO is a NASA‐sponsored Earth System Science Pathfinder program.
SDL is responsible for the following:
- Thermal design and analysis, including temperature‐induced shift
- Structural design and analysis
- Contamination analysis
- Procurement and fabrication
- Acceptance testing (thermal, structural, optical)
- Post‐delivery support
OCO Facts:
- During its two‐year lifetime after launch in 2008, the OCO mission will collect space‐based measurements of carbon dioxide.
- OCO’s three focal plane assemblies are mounted to the cryogenic subsystem, which thermally isolate the focal planes from the instrument and provide a low‐impedance thermal interface to the cryocooler.
- The hardware meets stringent requirements for stability, temperature, heat flow, contamination, mass, and volume. The flexible thermal link and the FPA carriers are sized to passively maintain two focal planes near 120 K and one near 180 K. The cryogenic subsystem was delivered to JPL in 2007.
