Thermal Investigations of Solar Panel Deployment Angles for a 3U CubeSat Orbiting at LEO

Abstract

Designing and manufacturing of CubeSats have a rapidly growing interest lately as they can serve in a wide range of space missions. To ensure that they are safe, stable, and functional in harsh space environment, thermal studies are very important. New design approaches have been introduced to manufacture more efficient and long-lasting satellites, and deploying solar panels is one of them aiming to harness more solar energy. In the literature, however, the studies focusing on CubeSats with deployed solar panels at different angles are very limited. Due to this reason, we investigated the thermal influences of solar panel deployment angle for a 3U CubeSat at low Earth orbit in this study. With this aim, the solar panel deployment angles of 75, 60, 45, 30, 15, 0, −15, −30, −45, −60, and −75 deg were modeled and simulated thermally. Besides, various orbital positions corresponding to different Earth days were examined for the 3U CubeSat with fully deployed solar panels. In addition, the heat absorbed by CubeSat structural panels and its solar panels were analyzed in detail. The results showed that solar panel deployment angles are highly influential on the satellite heating, and hence, maximum heat input occurs at the deployment angle of 15 deg. It can be here noted that our results of this study may give rise to valuable contribution for optimizing the design and energy budget of CubeSats. Furthermore, the available energy harnessed by solar panels can be maximized accordingly.