Questions tagged [thermal]

How heat affects spacecraft and space missions, or materials and methods to deal with heat.

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Insulation on rockets--why take it to space?

I'm especially thinking of the loss of the Columbia due to damage from chunks of insulation that came off. I got to wondering, why is it there in the first place? Of course it's needed while you are preparing for launch or you would get insane…
Loren Pechtel
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How to calculate the thermal energy received by a satellite at a distance from the Earth?

I need to find the thermal energy received by a satellite in LEO from the Earth, on the night side. The thermal energy received from the Sun by a satellite is easy to calculate, because the Sun is a point source: $$ \Phi=\frac{L_\odot}{4\pi r^2}…
OZ1SEJ
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