Solar Radiation profiles for a 3U CubeSat in LEO

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple, adaptable model and Matlab code to estimate solar radiation profiles on 3U CubeSats in Low Earth Orbit, aiding in preliminary design and analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, easy-to-adjust model and code for calculating solar radiation on CubeSats in LEO, facilitating higher-level studies.

Findings

Model effectively estimates solar radiation profiles.

Code is adaptable to various orbits and CubeSat configurations.

Provides a useful tool for preliminary satellite design studies.

Abstract

This paper introduces a relatively simple model to retrieve data about the solar radiation profiles on the external faces of a generic 3U-CubeSat in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The model is inspired by relevant papers, and the related code is entirely written on Matlab. The code was intended to be well adjustable for various ranges of orbits and CubeSats with minimum effort and provide base data to be used in higher-level studies.