How ESA Made Solar Panels That Work In Deep Space
to perform its scientific mission. That’s a problem, because Jupiter — at 778 million kilometers from the sun — receives only 3% as much solar energy as does the Earth. The ambient temperature in the part of the solar system occupied by Jupiter is just 30º C above absolute zero. To make the Juice mission possible, ESA had to inventthat could operate effectively in the cold and dark environment that surrounds Jupiter.
While the solar cells for the Rosetta mission were only about 20% efficient, the latest GaAs triple junction cells are close to being 30% efficient. It was not simply a matter of transplanting solar cells from a generic mission to Juice. They needed to be specifically tested for performance at the “low intensity, low temperature” conditions prevalent around Jupiter.“Change the environment and behavior changes too,” says Carsten. “So we had to adapt our test setups to low light and cold.
Another challenge was to assess the effects of the high radiation levels in the vicinity of Jupiter. “The solar cells of geostationary telecom satellites are exposed to radiation of course. What we find is that, as they are continuously exposed to sunlight, high temperatures lead them to a degree of self-healing from radiation damage. But out at Jupiter such self-healing is not available,” Carsten says.
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