Advanced Cooling Technologies

Advanced Cooling Technologies (ACT) is a thermal management engineering company founded in 2003 and headquartered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, specializing in heat pipe technologies, two-phase cooling systems, and thermal control solutions for spacecraft, defense electronics, and high-power industrial applications. ACT is ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100D certified with ITAR registration, serving NASA, DoD, commercial satellite manufacturers, and aerospace prime contractors.

ACT's core product lines span the full spectrum of passive and active thermal management: conventional heat pipes (copper-water, titanium-ammonia, stainless-aluminum for cryogenic), loop heat pipes (LHPs) for long-distance spacecraft thermal transport, variable conductance heat pipes (VCHPs) for temperature-regulated electronics, and oscillating heat pipes (OHPs) for high-flux cooling. For spacecraft specifically, ACT designs and manufactures thermal straps, deployable radiators, cryocooler interfaces, and isothermalizer assemblies that maintain tight temperature windows for sensors, batteries, and RF electronics in vacuum.

The company's spacecraft applications include thermal control hardware for NASA science missions and commercial communications satellites, where ACT heat pipes transfer heat from power amplifiers and processors to spacecraft radiator panels. ACT has delivered thermal systems for instruments on Mars orbiters, deep space probes, and LEO satellites requiring precise temperature stability across orbital day/night thermal cycling of ±100°C or more. The company also develops specialized solutions for cryogenic cooling — maintaining infrared detector arrays at 70–150 K — using nitrogen or neon as working fluids in flight-qualified hardware.

ACT's engineering team of approximately 80 engineers (many with PhDs in heat transfer) operates dedicated thermal vacuum test chambers, vibration and shock test equipment, and clean room assembly facilities at its Lancaster campus. Beyond flight hardware, ACT provides thermal analysis services and prototype development for next-generation concepts including heat pipe arrays for nuclear power systems under NASA's Kilopower/KRUSTY programs and advanced hypersonic thermal protection. Competing companies include Thermacore (now Boyd Corporation), Orbital Sciences thermal division, and ATA Engineering in the spacecraft thermal solutions market.