• Heat pipes
• Infrared thermography
• Micro-gravity
• Spacecraft thermal control

Heat management has always been fundamental in spacecraft design since the dawn of space ight. A mission can fail, even catastrophically, for a poor heat management on a single piece of hardware. More so if it is a fundamental part that fails, like an engine or a solar panel. In the last few years, the progressive miniaturization of electronics and space missions more and more demanding have accentuated the attention on the research of new solutions to properly address the problem.
Right now, two-phase heat transfer devices are becoming the predominant solution for heat management, in particular sintered wick Heat Pipes (HP) and Loop Heat Pipes (LHP). This is due to their reliability, lightness and, most of all, their capability to operate without the assistance of any acceleration field. The latter is obtained thanks to a wick, which is also the most complex and expensive element inside the system, enhancing capillarity. A Pulsating Heat Pipe (PHP) is a special kind of heat pipe that does not rely on a wick for capillarity but on the pipe itself and thus it results cheaper and more apt to a space environment.
The work contained in this thesis is focused on the design, realization and the subsequent micro-gravity tests on a specific design of Pulsating Heat Pipe that will be hosted in the Heat Transfer Host on the International Space Station in 2020. In particular, it deals with the design, realization and integration of a Rack for testing, set in the 67th ESA Parabolic Flight Campaign in November 2017 and on a first analysis of the outcomes.