Efficient and Reliable Solar Panels for Small CubeSat Picosatellites

Joint Authors

Vertat, Ivo
Vobornik, Ales

Source

International Journal of Photoenergy

Issue

Vol. 2014, Issue 2014 (31 Dec. 2014), pp.1-8, 8 p.

Publisher

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Publication Date

2014-06-25

Country of Publication

Egypt

No. of Pages

8

Main Subjects

Chemistry

Abstract EN

CubeSat picosatellites have a limited area of walls for solar cells assembling and the available area has to be effectively shared with other parts, such as planar antennas, optical sensors, camera lens, and access port.

With standard size of solar cell strings, it is not possible to construct a reliable solar panel for CubeSat with redundant strings interconnection.

Typical solar panels for CubeSat consist of two solar cell strings serially wired with no redundancy in case of solar string failure.

The loss of electric energy from one solar panel can cause a serious problem for most picosatellites due to minimum margin in the blueprints of the picosatellite subsystem power budget.

In this paper, we propose a new architecture of solar panels for PilsenCUBE CubeSat with a high level of redundancy in the case of solar string failure or following switched power regulator failure.

Our solar panels use a high efficiency triple junction GaInP2/GaAs/Ge in the form of small triangle strings from the Spectrolab Company.

A suitable technology for precise solar cell assembling is also discussed, because CubeSat picosatellites are usually developed by small teams with limited access to high-end facilities.

American Psychological Association (APA)

Vertat, Ivo& Vobornik, Ales. 2014. Efficient and Reliable Solar Panels for Small CubeSat Picosatellites. International Journal of Photoenergy،Vol. 2014, no. 2014, pp.1-8.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1037153

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Vertat, Ivo& Vobornik, Ales. Efficient and Reliable Solar Panels for Small CubeSat Picosatellites. International Journal of Photoenergy No. 2014 (2014), pp.1-8.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1037153

American Medical Association (AMA)

Vertat, Ivo& Vobornik, Ales. Efficient and Reliable Solar Panels for Small CubeSat Picosatellites. International Journal of Photoenergy. 2014. Vol. 2014, no. 2014, pp.1-8.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1037153

Data Type

Journal Articles

Language

English

Notes

Includes bibliographical references

Record ID

BIM-1037153