The Generate Events Interface feature is present by default. Additional Generate Events Interface features can be added to the Orbital Thermal Loads interface in case, for example, to compare different scenarios based on different events. The Generate Events Interface feature controls an events interface that is solved for with the Orbital Thermal Loads interface in order to detect the events times. It also automatically adds explicit events when the spacecraft goes into and out of eclipse.

Click the Create New button to add a new Events Interface in the same component with the events from the Implicit Event and Explicit Event sections. Alternatively, select an existing event interface in the Events interface list and click Refresh button to overwrite the autogenerated features of the selected event interface and replace them with the ones from the Implicit Event and Explicit Event sections. Before removing the autogenerated features, the user is prompted with a dialog to confirm this action. The manually added features of the events interface are untouched when the Refresh button is clicked.

Select the Fast tumbling check box to enable the fast tumbling approximation at the beginning of the simulation. The approximation remains active until an event that specifies that the approximation is not longer enabled is triggered. This approximation replaces the evaluation of the radiation received by the Sun at every position by an averaged value. This option can be used if you assume that the spacecraft is tumbling sufficiently fast that all environmental heat loads can be averaged. It saves computational time by not computing the external sources view factors.

In the Axes feature list, select the Spacecraft Axes feature specifying the initial pointing direction of the spacecraft.

Set the Spacecraft Orientation list to the Spacecraft Orientation feature specifying the initial orientation of the spacecraft.

The table lists all the implicit events taken into account during the spacecraft orbit. For each event set the Event type to any implicit available event.

Set the Axes feature and the Orientation feature to define the spacecraft positioning when the event occurs. The positioning is repeated each time the event type is encountered.

Set the Fast tumbling check box to control whether the fast tumbling approximation (see Initial Orientation) is active or not when the event occurs.

Add events in the Explicit events table by setting at which Time the event occur and what is its corresponding Axes feature and the Orientation feature at this time. The event is repeated every period specified in the Period of event column. Set Period of event to inf (default) if the event does not repeat. Set the Fast tumbling check box to control whether the fast tumbling approximation (see Initial Orientation) is active or not when the event occurs.

Physics tab with Orbital Thermal Loads selected: