North East thermal technology supporting European deep-space satellite development
- 1 day ago
- 1 min read
Boyd Thermal, based in Ashington, Northumberland, is helping support the development of a next-generation European spacecraft through its advanced K-Core® thermal-management technology.
The North East engineering and manufacturing site has been working with Italian space company Argotec on the HENON satellite, a 12U CubeSat designed for a deep-space mission focused on monitoring solar activity and space weather.
The spacecraft’s high power density creates significant thermal-management challenges. To address this, Argotec selected customised K-Core® radiator panels supplied by Boyd Thermal. The panels use annealed pyrolytic graphite technology to provide enhanced in-plane heat spreading compared with conventional aluminium spacecraft panels.
Argotec has now successfully completed a thermal vacuum test campaign on the engineering-model K-Core® radiator panels and used the results to support correlation of the spacecraft thermal mathematical model.
The collaboration provides a strong example of how specialist thermal-management capability from Northumberland can support complex spacecraft development programmes across Europe and contribute to the growing space technology ecosystem in the North East.
Boyd Thermal will also be attending the European Space Thermal Engineering Workshop at ESA/ESTEC in the Netherlands from 6–8 October 2026, where the K-Core® radiator panel testing and thermal-model correlation work is planned to be presented.
For Boyd Thermal, the project highlights the role that advanced engineering capability in Ashington can play in enabling future high-power-density satellites and other demanding space applications.
