An Investigation in the Thermal Effect on a Low Earth Orbit Satellite under Yaw Motion for the Visibility of a Star Sensor

Thermal condition according to the operation attitude of a satellite in orbit would be essential to be known because the orbit attitude is a dominant factor to affect satellite thermal design. In this paper, the change in space thermal environment and the thermal effect in thermal design are studied for a low earth orbit satellite according to the yaw motion. The present satellite retains sun-pointing attitude during daylight due to the fixed type solar arrays. And it also moves along the orbit with constant yaw motion in a longitudinal axis so that a star tracker which is a star sensor for satellite`s attitude control always looks into the deep space. This attitude is considered in its better visibility to the stars for a successful mission operation. Also, it is required to access the corresponding thermal effects due to the yaw motion. Therefore, we try to verify these by the thermal analysis for the satellite thermal model with the yaw motion.