ESABASE2 / COMOVA

ESABASE2/COMOVA is an application that integrates ESA’s contamination, outgassing and vent analysis tool COMOVA in ESABASE2 and enables the user to calculate the contamination of spacecraft surfaces in low Earth orbits. The use of COMOVA is facilitated through the geometry editing capabilities and the graphical user interface of ESABASE2. The latter provides both input editors as well as result display facilities.

ESABASE2/COMOVA is an adaption of the existing COMOVA application, which provides the following enhancements and extensions compared to the old ESABASE contamination module:

• Computation of contamination deposits on surfaces, including the calculation of mass transfer factors and surface temperature effects.
• Calculation of line-of-sight obstruction or column density and resulting absorptance of radiation to the gas surrounding the spacecraft.
• Inclusion of venting/leakage effects, using emission laws which may be different from Lamberts law.
• Inclusion of molecular transport mechanisms (direct flux, reflected flux from other surfaces, contaminants and ambient gas).