Overview, testing and solutions to ESD-induced, solar-array string, on-orbit failures
✍ Scribed by A Meulenberg
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 72 KB
- Volume
- 8
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1062-7995
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Geostationary satellites have had sections of their high!voltage GaAs "and perhaps silicon# solar arrays fail abruptly on orbit[ The recent "0886:7# occurrence of the problem was shown to correlate highly with active Geomagnetic!substorm activity "of the type that can result in spacecraft charging events# and thus was attributed to electrostatic discharge "ESD#[ A review of the cause and damage mechanisms of the effect is provided\ along with the array requirements for this type of damage and the solutions to the problem[ A comparison is made between several aspects of silicon and GaAs cells and how these could affect the probability of such damage[ An extended discussion of the various points includes speculation about earlier solar!cell!string failures on silicon arrays[ Copyright