Citation
Abstract
Very low Earth orbit (VLEO) enables improved spatial resolution and access to the lower thermosphere, but sustained operations are limited by strong, highly variable aerodynamic drag in the free molecular flow regime. In addition to drag, spacecraft must also meet numerous other requirements, including mass, volume, and power. Together, these constraints motivate design methods that can explore large parameter spaces with multiple competing objectives. This report presents early work toward an end-to-end workflow for VLEO shape optimization that couples the primitive-based Nebulous evolutionary algorithm with the Vehicle Environment Coupling and TrajectOry Response (VECTOR) aerodynamic simulation software. A key challenge is ensuring that the aerodynamic model and optimization representation use a consistent and effective level of geometric detail. We therefore first ran sensitivity studies in VECTOR to estimate the impact of surface feature size and surface resolution on force coefficient. These results guide the minimum feature scale and mesh/shape resolution used in the Nebulous pipeline, so that design changes can result in evolutionary pressure. We then tested the algorithm by minimizing the force coefficient subject to CubeSat volume limits. The evolution shows a steady improvement in aerodynamic performance, demonstrating that the workflow can generate and evaluate diverse shapes and apply selection pressure effectively. This establishes a baseline for follow-on multi-objective optimization that will explicitly trade drag against functional surface features, stability, power, and other mission constraints.
Keywords
Details
- Volume
- 42-244
- Published
- February 15, 2026
- Pages
- 1–30
- File Size
- 16.4 MB