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Loading contentThe subsystem that keeps every part of a spacecraft within its allowable temperature range, radiating away waste heat and insulating against the extreme cold of space and the heat of the Sun.
Electric heaters and passive heat pipes that keep components — propellant lines, batteries, instruments — above their minimum temperatures, moving heat from where it is made to where it is needed or shed.
The shiny, quilted blankets that wrap most spacecraft — many thin reflective layers that block radiative heat transfer, insulating against both the Sun's heat and the cold of space.
A surface that sheds a spacecraft's waste heat into space by infrared radiation — the only way to cool in a vacuum, where there is no air to carry heat away.
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.
European missions, observatories, and space science imagery.