Irradiation Flux Modelling for Thermal–Electrical Simulation of CubeSats: Orbit, Attitude and Radiation Integration

Abstract

During satellite development, engineers need to simulate and understand the satellite’s behavior in orbit and minimize failures or inadequate satellite operation. In this sense, one crucial assessment is the irradiance field, which impacts, for example, the power generation through the photovoltaic cells, as well as rules the satellite’s thermal conditions. This good practice is also valid for CubeSat projects. This paper presents a numerical tool to explore typical irradiation scenarios for CubeSat missions by combining state-of-the-art models. Such a tool can provide the input estimation for software and hardware in the loop analysis for a given initial condition and predict it along with the satellite’s lifespan. Three main models will be considered to estimate the irradiation flux over a CubeSat, namely an orbit, an attitude, and a radiation source model, including solar, albedo, and infrared emitted by the Earth. A case study illustrating the tool’s abilities is presented for a typical CubeSats’ two-line element set (TLE) and five attitudes. Finally, a possible application of the tool as an input to a CubeSat task-scheduling is introduced. The results show that the complete model’s use has considerable differences from the simplified models sometimes used in the literature.