A General Calculation Method for Spacecraft Orbital Heat Flux

The analysis of external heat flux is the basis for temperature field calculation of spacecrafts, and even more the basis for the selection of extreme thermal working conditions. This paper proposes a general calculation method for external heat flux of spacecraft, using an analytical method to calculate incident solar heat flux and a numerical integration method to solve planetary infrared radiation and albedo heat flux. Based on this method, a Sun-synchronous orbit is selected to analyze the transient external heat flux of a hexahedral satellite in common attitudes, and the analysis results are compared with those calculated by Thermal Desktop, a thermal analysis software. The comparison shows that the transient external heat flux results calculated by this method differ very slightly from the software calculation results. The method enables rapid calculation of the external heat flux for common spacecraft attitudes, providing important basis for spacecraft thermal control design and thermal analysis.