Speaker
Description
In the current context, lunar exploration, particularly with NASA's Artemis program, has become a crucial issue for the space industry. Several agencies are investing in systems able to withstand this extremely hostile environment. This presentation focuses on modelling lunar surface temperature using Systema (Airbus Defence and Space software). The approach involves comparing numerical simulations with reference cases from the bibliography, such as the ESA article “ICES-2024-154 - Application Cases of the ESATAN-TMS Python API”.
First, a simplified geometrical model of the lunar surface has been created, with thermo-optical properties of regolith, using a flat meshing and including the Moon's orbitography. These results were compared with measured data (NASA – Apollo 17). Then, a sub-surface non-geometrical thermal model has been introduced, with physical properties of regolith, to evaluate its impact on Moon surface temperature. For this example, sensitivity cases have been performed (landing sites, number of sub–surface nodes etc..) to find the good compromise between calculation time and model precision. Thanks to Systema Pyton API, ADS developed the Python « Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Data Importer », to import topography in the thermal model and to create sub-surfaces non-geometrical nodes. Using these tools, a more complex ground thermal model has been created, with geometrical nodes on lunar surface (with reliefs and craters) and a non-geometrical model for the sub-surface. This example allowed to study the impact of shading effects on a simplified geometry on lunar surface. To conclude, the thermal modeling process of lunar surface temperature implemented using Systema has been validated with these reference cases.