Architectural Design Criteria for Spacecraft Solar Arrays

Scope of this chapter is to provide design criteria for spacecraft solar arrays at system level. The design a satellite solar array is usually influenced by several constraints; mission profile, chosen attitude, overall spacecraft configuration, mass and sizing requirements, etc. Moreover, its design has to be harmonised with the chosen solar array power conditioning, in order to optimize mass, dimensions, and also particular constraints coming from EMC and thermal environments. The chapter is basically composed of the following sections; 1. General description of the current solar cell technologies currently used in space, with particular attention to the triple junction solar cells. 2. Mathematical model of an equivalent solar cell circuit, to be used for performance calculations in a numerical simulation environment. 3. Mathematical description of a simplified thermal model of a solar array in order to analyse solar array performances in orbit. 4. Short definition of cosmic radiation effects. 5. The satellite power budget, starting point for the solar array sizing 6. The impact of the power conditioning architecture on the solar array (electrical operative point, EMC considerations). 7. The configuration of the solar array with respect to the spacecraft. 8. Some design examples for different missions and satellite configurations. 9. Numerical simulations of solar array performances as function of the mission profile (orbit propagation, slew manoeuvres, attitudes of particular interest).