Abstract: Heat pipe cold plate is an effective way to cool down electronic equipment. In order to study the heat transfer characteristics and service life of heat pipe cold plate under airborne conditions, nine kinds of different heat pipe cold plates are designed and manufactured, then normal temperature test-bed is developed to investigate the heat transfer characteristics at normal temperature, and high and low temperatures test-bed is built to study the start-up performance and stable-state performance at high and low temperature. The results of normal temperature tests show that the double-U ordinary copper-water heat pipe cold plate has the best heat transform characteristics and the vapor chamber followed. The high and low temperature tests show that both the start-up time and stable temperature of double-U ordinary copper-water heat pipe cold plate are lower than micro-heat pipe arrays, but most affected by temperature, and the same performance of micro-heat pipe arrays with capillary structure are better than that without capillary structure, and least affected by temperature. The research work can provide some foundation for the selection and design of the heat pipe cold plate used for cooling the airborne electronic equipment.