Overview of the Altair Lunar Lander Thermal Control System Design

NASA’s Constellation Program (CxP) has been developed to successfully return humans to the Lunar surface prior to 2020. The CxP includes several different project offices including Altair, which is the next generation Lunar Lander. The planned Altair missions are quite different than the Lunar missions accomplished during the Apollo era. These differences have resulted in a significantly dissimilar Thermal Control System (TCS) architecture. The current paper will summarize the Altair mission architecture and the various operational phases. In addition, the derived thermal requirements will be presented. The paper will conclude with a brief description of the TCS designed to meet these unique and challenging thermal requirements.