The Magellan spacecraft was inserted into an elliptical orbit around the planet Venus on August 10, 1990. A small aerodynamic force was applied later to the spacecraft for 730 consecutive orbits to lower the apoapsis of the orbit from 8500 km to 541 km. Atmospheric drag removed a maximum of 2 m/sec per orbit from the velocity at periapsis for a total delta-V of 1200 m/sec. This paper will discuss the thermal accommodation coefficient which was inferred from one of the four solar panel temperature measurements from the aerobraking pass through the atmosphere.


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    Title :

    Measuring the Thermal Accommodation Coefficient while Aerobraking Magellan


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    1994-07-25


    Type of media :

    Preprint


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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