Calculating atmospheric drag on satellites for a Cubesat [pdf]

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1124870

Comments

snthdSep 26, 2026, 11:46 AM
Related - spaceweather.com measure drag using the decay of starlink orbits.

https://spaceweather.com/starlink/starlink_drag_explainer.ht...

WalterGRSep 26, 2026, 2:56 PM
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49848227
stymaarSep 26, 2026, 11:54 AM
Clever idea, too bad they didn't bother writing down their blog post themselves and posted AI slop instead.
voxleoneSep 26, 2026, 12:16 PM
>>AI writing is everywhere -- except here. This website is written by Dr. Tony Phillips, a carbon-based lifeform with 30 yrs of forecasting experience.

Could they be lying?

jagged-chiselSep 26, 2026, 2:33 PM
You can’t lie on the Internet.
snthdSep 26, 2026, 11:48 AM
https://web.archive.org/web/20260924014030/https://www.osti....
ck2Sep 26, 2026, 1:41 PM
could LEO sats have pitot tubes? would they work at ultra-low drag?

my Stryd has a pitot tube and can detect 1mph wind fairly accurately

some advanced drones also have pitot tubes

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitot_tube

* https://store.3dr.com/pitot-tube-set/

echoangleSep 26, 2026, 9:37 PM
I don’t think so, the pressure you’re measuring would be extremely small. The air at that altitude is acting as a free molecular flow, there’s not a lot of molecules that exert pressure. I think you would need some exotic detector that essentially can detect individual molecules hitting the surface, the pressure itself is tiny.

Maybe the sensor types used for ultra low vacuums could detect the pressure, but I’m not sure if you could gather enough molecules in a front facing tube to get a pressure increase over ambient.