Lunar Thermal Environment Modeling and Thermal Design Trade-Offs for Lunar South Pole Landers

This thesis addresses the thermal control challenges faced by lunar landers, focusing on both surface interaction modeling and thermal hardware design. While the thermal behaviour of spacecraft in orbit has been extensively studied, the lunar surface poses distinctive challenges that remain open to exploration, particularly when considering long-duration surface operations. To investigate these issues, a detailed thermal model of the lunar surface was developed using ESATAN-TMS. Several models of increasing complexity were created to simulate the radiative environment, surface meshing, and thermophysical properties of the regolith. A simplified thermal model of a lunar descent module was also created to assess how environmental conditions impact internal temperature distributions. Following this, a range of design strategies was explored for the passenger module of the lander, focusing on techniques for managing heat under both hot and cold operating conditions. A custom computational tool using Excel was also developed to support radiator sizing and performance assessment. This tool allows evaluation of radiator behaviour under varying latitudes, terrain inclinations, and environmental parameters, while also accounting for optical degradation caused by lunar dust.