Energy supply system of the spacecraft with long-term lifetime

Аuthors

Okorokova N. S.^*, Pushkin K. V.^**, Sevruk S. D.^***, Farmakovskaya A. A.^****

Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University), 4, Volokolamskoe shosse, Moscow, А-80, GSP-3, 125993, Russia

*e-mail: ok.nadezhda@mail.ru
**e-mail: konstantin-val@yandex.ru
***e-mail: sds46@yandex.ru
****e-mail: a.a.farmakovskaya@gmail.com

Abstract

Under a spacecraft (SC) with long-term lifetime we mean a vehicle with an active shelf operating time of about 10-15 years. SC should be considered as a unified energy system which consists of a number of interactive subsystems. The main part of the SC power system includes an energy unit (EU) which provides the energy for all power consumers. Only solar or nuclear energy can be considered as primary energy for the vehicles under examination. At the present time it is the basic primary energy source for the low-earth SC and for the Sun directed probes. The main way for developing of the space solar power usage is the direct photoelectric conversion of the solar radiation. The development of huge power energy production (more than megawatt) will require the application of the nuclear power sources.

The main part of the SC EU is an energy accumulation system based usually on the storage battery (SB) that presents the major part of the entire EU mass and often determines the battery life. The lifetime of the modern SB depends on the operation conditions and it ranges from several hundreds of charge-discharge cycles (Ag-Zn) to dozens of thousands of cycles (Ni-Cd, Ni- H₂). The required SB life time depends on the SC orbit and is achieved by the deducting the discharge level.

The life cycle of modern capacity storages (supercapacitor) is greater by an order than it is for any other SB but their specific energy characteristics are much lower. Due to the increase of the suitable SB mass in case of the discharge level reduction and quite big amount of cycles the capacity storage characteristics will make them a promising energy storage system.

At the present time the Li-ion SB is widely used in SC on-board power systems. The necessity to use Li- ion SB as a part of the SC is caused by the increasingly stringent requirements for the increase of the specific power loading and reliability of the on-board power source. At the present time the life time of the Li-ion accumulators is insufficient for the SC under examination (near 1-2 thousand of charge-discharge cycles). The possibilities of the life time increase by means of the discharge level reduction (by analogy with Ni-Cd SB) have been studied insufficiently. However the continuous improvement of these sources allows to hope that of the required life time characteristics in the future.

Keywords:

spacecraft energy supply, life time of the space power plant, space power plant, operating time of the space power plant

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