Study of Rarefied Aerodynamics for Super Low Altitude Satellites

At Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Super Low Altitude Test Satellite (SLATS), named “TSUBAME” was successfully launched in 2017. In this work, we investigate rarefied aerodynamic characteristics for the SLATS geometry by carrying out free molecular (FM) and direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) computations, and SLATS aerodynamic databases are developed on the basis of FM and DSMC results. The databases are used to estimate atmospheric density for SLATS, and we finally discuss the SLATS aerodynamic characteristics by comparing preliminary SLATS density data with several conventional atmospheric models.