High Fidelity Radiation Pressure Models for Spacecraft.

Recently, I’ve been working on developping a new approach for modeling radiation pressure on spacecraft. My focus has been on harnessing the latest advancements in computer rendering (leveraging the Mitsuba 3 Physics-Based Ray Tracer) to produce high-fidelity radiation pressure models derived from spacecraft CAD models.

A pressing concern in the field is the existing methods’ inefficiency and complexity. As the diversity and frequency of spacecraft launches grow exponentially each month, relying on these modeling techniques is becoming unsustainable. However, it’s evident that high-fidelity radiation pressure models play a pivotal role in space traffic management and as researchers we must push for our reseach to be used and taken up in practice. High accuracy radiation pressure models are indispensable for space traffic management, especially in the calculation of operational metrics like probability of collision.

Guided by Professor Tobias Ritschel and Dr. Santosh Bhattarai’s expertise, I’m currently working to validate my prototype. While I’m eager to unveil our complete work, I can only offer this preliminary glimpse of our first simulation for now. Stay tuned for more updates!