U Phos Project

U-PHOS is a project whose main goal is to characterize an innovative heat exchange device for space applications. Our project is framed into the ESA Educational’s REXUS/BEXUS programme. The team is exclusively composed of University students. We have been selected in December 2015 from an ESA, DLR and SNSB selection board, to participate to the rocket launch campaign of REXUS 21/22. We are going to design, realize and test an experiment which will be mounted on board of the REXUS sounding rocket, in order to test our device in a reduced gravity environment. The device that we are going to test in our experiment is a Pulsating Heat Pipe (PHP). A PHP is a passive heat transfer device which by means of a two-phase fluid, in a capillary tube, is capable to dissipate high values of thermal power. During our project we are going to face a lot of reviews and tests, before getting on board of the rocket spring of 2017. The rocket will be launched from the SSC’S (Swedish Space Cooperation) Esrange Space Center, in Kiruna (Sweden).