"Solar Array Configurations for Microsatellites Flying in Sunsynchronous Orbits"

A beginning of life maximum power point, solar array power output model is developed to comparatively evaluate different kind of array configurations. To correctly describe temperature effects on power output, various thermal models are compared, selecting the better one with respect to solar panel type. Two different constanttemperature thermal models are selected in order to describe body mounted and sun pointing solar arrays. Various body mounted solar arrays configurations are compared to sun pointing ones for sunsynchronous orbits with ascending node local time ranging from 12 to 6 am. To this end, total solar array area, power time history and satellite volume are considered. Results show that configurations with one or three body mounted panels can adequately replace a sun pointing array depending on the ascending node local time. © 2003 IEEE