Demonstration of low temperature radiative cooler for future space missions

Low temperature radiative coolers permit more sensitive, lower temperature detectors for science instruments in space, and can extend the length of missions at low cost and mass. A miniature radiative cooler was designed, constructed, and tested and achieved a stabilized temperature of 34 K with no load and an outer shell temperature of 91 K. This is an improvement upon previous lower limits of radiative coolers of 50 K. Thermal modeling and experiment agree within 2 K.