During Summer 2023, I interned at Second Order Effects, an engineering consulting company in El Segundo, CA. As a member of the mechanical engineering team, I was assigned to a client who was developing a satellite sizing design studio. The end goal of the product is to reduce the time between the first satellite mission ideas and full systems preliminary design review. My team’s role was to translate the “secret sauce” of satellite design and sizing into an algorithm that can interact with a database of commercially available satellite components. For the client’s privacy I can’t go into much detail about the project, but I can highlight my major contributions to the team.
I was tasked with developing a thermal control system sizing program. I worked with GNC, propulsion, communications, and orbital mechanics teams to develop a logical flow from user inputs to sizing calculations to component selection.
Using thermal requirements based on previous component selections and the orbital path, I developed software in python to calculate spacecraft temperatures and determine if it stayed within limits of the satellites most sensitive equipment. If the predicted conditions were not within component requirements, the program would then iterate through various thermal management options to find the optimal solution given previous user inputs.
Working on the project allowed me to develop a fundamental understanding of heat transfer and the challenges of designing hardware for the space environment.
Chris Knotek 