Abstract Operating satellites at altitudes in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) has many advantages. However, due to the higher atmospheric density of this region, satellites encounter significantly higher atmospheric drag. Depending on the mission, this may require a propulsive system to maintain the orbit which costs both fuel mass and volume. It is therefore desirable to reduce the drag in order to either reduce these costs or to extend the operational life. In this paper a series of viable aeroshell profiles are identified for satellites operating in VLEO using a Radial Basis Function-based surrogate model with data generated using both Panel Methods and Discrete Simulation Monte Carlo simulations. It was demonstrated that a maximum drag reduction of between 21% and 35% was achievable for the profiles when optimizing a bi-conic profile for minimum drag based on Discreet Simulation Monte Carlo simulations with an energy accommodation coefficient of 0.95. Accounting for the loss of internal volume and assuming the reduction in fuel mass results in an equally proportioned reduction in fuel system volume it was observed that only a 13% to 27% reduction was achieved.

中文翻译：

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通过对超低地球轨道卫星进行形状优化来减少阻力

摘要 在极低地球轨道 (VLEO) 高空运行的卫星有许多优点。然而，由于该地区的大气密度较高，卫星会遇到明显更高的大气阻力。根据任务的不同，这可能需要一个推进系统来维持轨道，这会消耗燃料质量和体积。因此，希望减少阻力以降低这些成本或延长使用寿命。在本文中，使用基于径向基函数的替代模型以及使用面板方法和离散模拟蒙特卡罗模拟生成的数据，为在 VLEO 中运行的卫星确定了一系列可行的航空壳轮廓。已经证明，当基于能量调节系数为 0.95 的 Discreet Simulation Monte Carlo 模拟优化双圆锥轮廓以获得最小阻力时，轮廓可实现 21% 至 35% 的最大阻力减少。考虑到内部容积的损失并假设燃料质量的减少导致燃料系统容积的等比例减少，观察到仅实现了 13% 到 27% 的减少。