Dynamic Thermal Radiation Analysis for Lunar Cubesats
- Paper ID
110116
- author
- company
Turkish-German University
- country
Türkiye
- year
2026
- abstract
Due to their cost-effectiveness, mission-oriented designs and rapid manufacturability, CubeSats will play a critical role in establishing a sustainable human presence on Moon upon the completion of the Lunar Gateway and Artemis project. During their missions, one of the major challenges CubeSats will face is thermal management. To conduct the high-precision measurements, even the slightest heat load must be predicted. In previous studies using simplified surface and orbit models, the thermal load on CubeSats throughout their trajectory has been calculated under static conditions. In this paper, to better simulate the impact of the complex lunar orbit conditions, a dynamic model has been used based on lunar optical and thermophysical properties. Using the JPL DE421 dataset, the three main types of radiation affecting the six surfaces of 1U nadir-pointing LLO CubeSat were analyzed, including solar, infrared (IR) and albedo radiation. Solar radiation has been modelled using date- and distance-dependent solar constant and partial solar exposure during penumbra transition. To simulate the IR radiation, a gradient has been modelled considering varying temperatures from 90 to 390 K and lunar thermophysical properties, thereby enabling dynamic IR calculation based on the CubeSat’s instantaneous position. Unlike the uniform albedo coefficients used in the literature, in this paper, a dynamic albedo model regarding local surface reflectance has been developed, using image processing on the Moon Clementine UVVIS Global Mosaic Map according to satellite’s position and field of view. Through this approach, the optical contrast between the bright Highlands and the dark Maria regions has been captured. With the developed model, two extreme scenarios have been simulated. In the cold case scenario where the sun pointing vector is parallel to the orbital plane, the average total heat load across all surfaces was calculated 22.16 W with a peak of 44.12 W. In the hot case where the sun pointing vector is perpendicular to the orbital plane, the same were calculated 24.98 W and 25.22 W respectively. The peak heat exposure by surfaces was observed in the hot case on the cross-track surface with 14.79 W, in the cold case on the ram surface with 15.91 W. These deviations emphasize the necessity of active thermal management systems on CubeSats. This study provides design infrastructure to develop such systems and could contribute to the Moon missions.