Satellite Solar Array Design

Solar panels on spacecraft supply power for two main uses.

Satellite solar array design. The availability of solar energy has encouraged the development of solar cell arrays which are major structural element for providing power generation of many spacecraft. Solar cell array design must be instituted early in the development of satellite design mission. Each starlink spacecraft has a flat panel design with multiple high throughput antennas and a single solar array according to information released in the press kit. Power to run the sensors active heating cooling and telemetry.

Solar array design the solar array mass must take into account the battery charging requirements along with load requirements. Design for any satellite includes its electrical power needs and the system to supply them. The configuration of the solar array with respect to the spacecraft. The width of the rectangular shaped array may be approximately.

In this paper the design requirements of the solar array for low earth orbit satellites are defined and the means of satisfying these requirements are described. The first step in this process is to find the amount of power that the solar array will provide per square meter in ideal circumstances phi ideal. If the satellite requires 2kw to function and if the energy consumed by the batteries by the loads during the eclipse is 2kw hr then the array must be able to generate will be around 3 kw of power. Now that we know how much power the solar arrays have to provide for the satellite we will use this as input to find the required size of the solar arrays.

Some design examples for different missions and satellite configurations. Thus the design of the solar array should comply with not only the power requirement of satellite system but also the input voltage requirement of the solar array regulator. Power for spacecraft propulsion electric propulsion sometimes called solar electric propulsion. The satellite power budget starting point for the solar array sizing 6.

For both uses a key figure of merit of the solar panels is the specific power watts generated divided by solar array mass which indicates on a relative basis how much.