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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

The power system of ESA`s ENVISAT-1 mission

Conference ·
OSTI ID:163384
 [1]
  1. European Space Agency, Noordwijk (Netherlands)
Under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA), European space industries are in the process of developing a large, high powered Polar Platform, to support the ENVISAT-1 mission due for launch in late 1998. The major objective of this mission is the maintenance beyond the year 2000 of the global monitoring and space home remote sensing services currently provided in Europe by the ERS satellites. To satisfy this mission requirement, the payload manifest of ENVISAT-1 will be comprised of eleven individual earth observing/sensing instruments, having a total mass of 1,900 kg and power requirement of 1.9 kilowatts (average) and 3 kilowatts (peak). In furnishing these instrument power requirements, the power generating element on ENVISAT-1 consists of a 14 panel deployable solar array wing, capable of providing approximately 6.5 kilowatts of electrical power at the end of four years of orbital lifetime. The energy storage element for the spacecraft consists of eight parallel connected, 40 ampere-hour batteries, each comprised of 24 series connected nickel-cadmium cells. Centralized power management is achieved by the Junction Shunt Regulator Unit (JSRU), which satisfies the payload and battery re-charge demands by controlling the available solar array power. At various locations within the spacecraft, electrical distribution units are accommodated. These equipments which receive power directly from the output of the JSRU, redistribute it to both the payload instruments and spacecraft service functions via several switched and protected power buses.
OSTI ID:
163384
Report Number(s):
CONF-950729--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English