MinXSS featured on Thermal Desktop homepage
MinXSS and its thermal model have been featured on the C&R Technologies, makers of Thermal Desktop, homepage! It’s right up there with the Mars 2020 rover mission. Thermal Desktop is a massive software plugin for AutoCAD that allows detailed thermal modeling of pretty much anything. For spacecraft, we don’t take advantage of its convection features, because there is no air to convect in space! Thermal Desktop has some great features for spacecraft, which includes orbit simulation so that you can model those important eclipse periods where the satellite is in the shadow of the earth. A paper on the thermal modeling and testing of MinXSS is in the works and will be submitted to the Journal of Small Satellites soon, probably this summer.