1.5 The Space Environment
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Students under the definitions and concepts of gravity, electromagnetic radiation, atmospheric particles, cosmic radiation, plasma, micrometeoroids, solar wind particles, the space vacuum, and planetary surface albedo, and their potential effects on spacecraft.
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Students understand how these natural phenomena affect the requirements of CubeSat design materials.
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Students understand how these natural phenomena put constraints on payloads.
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Students understand how these natural phenomena put requirements on attitude control.
“Space is hard” is a proverbial statement in aerospace. It was quoted both when Israel and India had landers crash into the Moon. Nothing puts more constraints on aerospace engineering than the harsh space environment. Engineering means working with constraints, and these constraints will require the engineer to devise work-arounds and adapted components and systems, or, if necessary, to forgo preferred methods. Many machines exist to test whether CubeSats will survive the rigors of launch and the space environment. These tests save money in the long run because a CubeSat that is Dead On Arrival (DOA) is a wasted launch cost. A large percentage of CubeSats are either DOA or have a catastrophic failure within 30 days.
Index:
- Introduction
- Pre-assessment
- Glossary
- Atmosphere
- Vacuum
- Electromagnetic Radiation
- High Velocity Particles
- Activities
- Knowledge Check!
- Resources
- Send a Postcard to Space!
