Nara National College of Technology Department of Electrical Engineering
Nara National College of Technology Department of Electrical Engineering
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Sagami Factory, Kamakura Works
出版者
宇宙航空研究開発機構
出版者(英)
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
雑誌名
宇宙航空研究開発機構特別資料
雑誌名(英)
JAXA Special Publication: 9th Spacecraft Charging Technology Conference
巻
JAXA-SP-05-001E
ページ
139 - 145
発行年
2005-08-01
抄録(英)
We carried out electron-beam irradiation experiments concerning the arcing discharges on solar arrays for space use. It is very important to make the discharge mechanism clear and to reflect it to a guideline for designing the solar arrays in order to maintain the high reliability of the future large spacecraft systems. We used a pair of real GaAs solar cells on an aluminum substrate as a sample. The sample was biased to - 9 kV and irradiated by the electron beam of the energy of 10 keV. The voltage from DC battery was applied to the gap between the cells under that condition. The discharge characteristics were obtained as parameters of the gap distance and the applied voltage between the cells. From the waveforms of transient discharge currents, the discharge time was analyzed to evaluate the harmfulness of arcing discharges to solar cells. As a result, the detrimental arcing did not occur even under several conditions of the cell gap distance and the cell gap voltage below 120 V, although a few hundreds of ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) took place. Therefore, the high voltage use of solar arrays is thought not to cause sustained arcing discharge to destroy the satellite system if arrays are designed to lower the maximum voltage between cell strings with an adequate distance.