NASA battery testbed enhances the understanding of nickel-cadmium battery spacecraft performance
- California Inst. of Technology, Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab.
In early 1992 several NASA Satellites experienced anomalies with their Nickel-Cadmium Batteries in flight. The batteries on both missions were manufactured in accordance to the NASA standard 50 Ah specification. The batteries on both missions had developed large half-battery voltage differentials (>100 mV) within the first year of operation. Eventually, this led to the removal of one battery off the CGRO power bus. During mid-1992 two other NASA missions were preparing for launch using batteries from the same design. After the removal of the CGRO battery and the launch of the other two missions many non-traditional methods of battery operation were suggested. These methods were proposed for the purpose of battery management in order to prolong battery life. The four missions utilized many types of operational strategies, all having the goal of minimizing battery overcharge. These strategies were fairly new and their impact on the battery performance was unknown. Therefore, the NASA battery testbed was established at JPL. The Testbed is operated by computer hardware and software. It has the capability to handle up to three 22-cell 50 Amp-hour batteries in parallel while collecting data for every cell within the batteries. The testbed can be configured to handle any capacity batteries below the 40 ampere per battery current limit and 60 volt per battery voltage limit. The testbed provides 24 hour automated operation and can simulate almost any orbit profile. This paper describes the detail capabilities of the testbed. To date several orbit profiles have been implemented, the paper will also describe the orbit profiles and the cell/battery performance in response to these profiles.
- OSTI ID:
- 187003
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950729-; TRN: IM9609%%295
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 30. intersociety energy conversion engineering conference, Orlando, FL (United States), 30 Jul - 5 Aug 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings of the 30. intersociety energy conversion engineering conference. Volume 1: Aerospace power; Goswami, D.Y. [ed.] [Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)]; Kannberg, L.D.; Somasundaram, S. [eds.] [Pacific Northwest Lab., Richland, WA (United States)]; Mancini, T.R. [ed.] [Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)]; PB: 798 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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