The present paper is a short summary of the work done by a research group of the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in the frame of the 2nd Young European Satellite (YES2) reentry capsule. YES2 is a project promoted by Delta-Utec in Netherlands, supported by European Space Agency and executed by 150 students from thirty universities in Europe and beyond. Main task of the group of the University of Rome "La Sapienza" is the evaluation of the thermal fluxes in correspondence of the most critical points along the re-entry trajectory. A numerical approach has been adopted to study the flow field that develops around the two different shapes of the YES2 capsule: the Closed shape, used to store YES2 on the International Space Station (ISS), and the Inflate shape used in the re-entry phase. A simplified dissociative model based on the Monti- Napolitano method has been implemented into the commercial CFD code FLUENT. A comparison and validation of the adopted approach has been also performed on the base of experimental data.
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