Harnessing waste heat of spacecraft to transmit data

Abstract

Described are techniques for harnessing the waste heat of a spacecraft to transmit data. A heat sink is thermally connected to the spacecraft. A heat sink refers to a component used to dissipate heat generated by components, such as electronics of a spacecraft, allowing the heat sink to radiate heat into a space vacuum environment. Furthermore, the system includes a modulation mechanism of the spacecraft connected to the heat sink, where the modulation mechanism selectively alters the waste heat thermal radiation emitted from the heat sink according to a signal. The emission of the waste heat thermal radiation from the heat sink at a particular frequency or pattern of pulses is used to encode data. In this manner, data can be transmitted in space in an energy efficient manner by harnessing the waste heat of the spacecraft to transmit data, which otherwise would be lost.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.