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Traditionally, the preliminary thermal design is behind the mechanical and electrical spacecraft design. Many factors contribute to this including a lack of detailed physical characteristics of the spacecraft and knowledge of the distribution of the thermal loads within the spacecraft. Therefore, the thermal design typically reacts to the mechanical and electrical designs. The thermal analyst gets a configuration and then tries to wrap an acceptable solution around it. The analyst relies on years of experience and trial and error to determine the appropriate design cases and create a thermal design. Depending on the experience level of the engineer, several iterations may be necessary to determine the worst-case design points and an acceptable thermal design.