A ballistic reentry vehicle RV (reentry vehicle) mission consists of three parts: launch, vac-uum, and reentry. During the launch phase the dominant load on the RV is the thrust and not the aerodynamic drag, causing shocks and vibration on the structure. With higher flight velocities, the energy content of the flow increases causing the spacecraft to heat up. While this is neglectable for deep space flight in vacuum, the effect becomes severe during the entry, even though the density and pressure in high altitudes are low. Due to the heating, aerodynamics must be extended to take thermodynamics into account.
In this thesis the reader will understand the problematic of an re-entry flight and how to calculate for a simple object such like a CubeSat its drag coefficient and therefore how to pre-dict the orbit lifetime. This includes the environment, starting from the atmosphere through which the RV is flying from space to ground, it includes the mathematical derivation and physical description to calculate certain properties and finally the code, written in Python, will be explained with which the values were obtained. The innovation lies not within the case-study but within its application with Python. This thesis emphasizes on using free and open source software for a simple but meaningful analysis rather than proprietary software in realizing a highly complex simulation.

Re-entry, satellite, Python, parallel computing, drag coefficient

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