Thermal Aspects of Satellite Downscaling

摘要

The strong trend toward nanosatellites creates new challenges in terms of thermal balance control. The thermalnbalance of a satellite is determined by the heat dissipation in its subsystems and by the thermal connections betweennthem. As satellites become smaller, heat dissipation in their subsystems tends to decrease and thermal connectivitynscales down with dimension. However, these two terms do not necessarily scale in the same way, and so the thermalnbalancemay alter and the temperature of subsystems may reach undesired levels. This paper focuses on low-Earth-norbit satellites. We constructed a generalized lumped thermal model that combines a generalized low-Earth-orbitnsatellite configuration with scaling trends in subsystem heat dissipation and thermal connectivity. Using satellitenmass as a scaling parameter, we show that subsystems do not become thermally critical by scaling mass alone.