Euro Heat Pipes

Euro Heat Pipes (EHP), headquartered in Nivelles, Belgium and operating as an Airbus subsidiary, is Europe's leading manufacturer of heat pipes and loop heat pipes (LHPs) for spacecraft thermal control — providing two-phase passive thermal management components that transport waste heat from dissipating spacecraft electronics, batteries, and payloads to radiators without any moving parts, electrical power consumption, or mechanical failure modes.

Founded in 2001 (incorporated within the Airbus Defence and Space supply chain), EHP has built the only dedicated space-grade heat pipe production facility in continental Europe, with capacity to manufacture over 4,000 heat pipes annually. This production scale, combined with EN 9100:2018 aerospace quality management certification and over 90 patents covering heat pipe geometry, wick structures, working fluids, and loop architectures, makes EHP the go-to thermal control supplier for European satellite programs including ESA science missions, Airbus Defence & Space commercial GEO satellites, OneWeb LEO constellation satellites, and Galileo navigation satellites.

Heat pipes exploit phase change thermodynamics: a working fluid (typically ammonia in space applications) evaporates at the heat source, vapor travels through an evacuated tube or loop to a condenser section, condenses and releases heat to a radiator panel, and capillary wick forces return the liquid to the evaporator without pumping. Loop heat pipes (LHPs) extend this principle to longer transport distances — up to several meters — and include a compensation chamber for thermal storage, enabling passive thermal regulation across the full temperature swings of GEO satellite eclipse cycles (-180°C to +150°C).

EHP's products appear on virtually every Airbus-built satellite including Eurostar Neo GEO buses, OneWeb flat-panel smallsats, and ESA missions from Rosetta to JUICE. The company competes internationally with ATK (now Northrop Grumman) in the U.S., IHI Aerospace in Japan, and smaller European suppliers, but holds a dominant position in the European market given its scale, patent portfolio, and integration with Airbus supply chain processes.