The Radiative Gas Dynamics of the Stardust Spacecraft

The calculation results of radiative-convective heating of the Stardust spacecraft obtained by the NERAT(2D)+ASTEROID computer code. The physicomathematical model of radiative nonequilibrium physicochemical gas dynamics was used. The system of equations of continuum mechanics has been solved by an explicit method using a simplified technique for solving the problem of breakdown of an arbitrary discontinuity. The system of equations of energy conservation of translational degrees of freedom of gas particles and vibrational degrees of freedom of molecules N₂, O₂, and NO has been solved by an implicit finite-difference method. A multiblock and multigrid procedure for obtaining the numerical solution is applied. Calculation of transfer of selective heat radiation has been carried out using the line-by-line method on specially generated computational grids nonuniform in wavelength of radiation that allow reaching a substantial reduction in computational resources. In a unified cycle of the computational process, we compute the spectral optical properties of high-temperature gases using ab-initio quasi-classical and quantum-mechanical methods.