Feasibility Study of Tethered Solar Power Satellite
- Paper number
IAC-05-C3.4-D2.8.06
- Author
Prof. Susumu Sasaki, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/ISAS, Japan
- Coauthor
Dr. Ken Higuchi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/ISAS, Japan
- Coauthor
Dr. N. Okuizumi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/ISAS, Japan
- Year
2005
- Abstract
Tethered Solar Power Satellite (Tethered-SPS) consisting of a large power generation/transmission panel and a bus system which are connected by multi-wires is proposed as an innovative solar power satellite. The concept Tethered-SPS is highly robust and potentially low cost. This paper presents a system analysis of 1 GW class Tethered-SPS on the construction, system dynamics, power generation, power transmission, and thermal analysis. The Tethered-SPS has a power generation/transmission panel of 2.0 km x 1.9 km suspended by 420 wires deployed from a bus system which is located at 10 km upward. The panel consists of 400 tethered sub-panels of 100 m x 95 m with 0.1 m thickness suspended by 4 wires. Each sub-panel has 9,500 power generation/transmission modules of 1 m x 1 m size. In each power module, the electric power generated by the solar cells is converted to the microwave power and no power line interface exists between the modules. The tethered sub-panel (50 MT) folded in a package of 9.5 m x 10 m x 10 m is a unit cargo transported from the ground to the low earth orbit by a reusable launch vehicle. The cargo is transferred to an orbit transfer vehicle in the low earth orbit around 500 km and transported to the geo-synchronous orbit. Using a 200 MT orbit transfer vehicle equipped with an electric propulsion of 80 N thrust, the cargo is transferred to the geo-synchronous orbit in 4 months without serious degradation for the solar cells in the radiation belt. The tethered sub-panel is automatically deployed, tested, and integrated to the SPS main body in the geo-synchronous orbit. The attitude of the Tethered-SPS is stabilized by the gravity gradient force without any active attitude control. Based on a quasi-static analysis considering the solar light pressure, it is shown that the variation of the attitude is largest along the pitch axis, but is still less than 0.14 degrees. Since the lower plane of the power generation/transmission panel is always faced to the earth by the gravity gradient force, the power generation varies with the local time as the sun angle changes. The average solar power to the panel is 64
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-C3.4-D2.8.06.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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