Solar Cell Current Simulator for a 3U Cube Satellite

Sammanfattning: A spacecraft must survive the cold and dark space at the same time it needs to sustain every subsystem with sufficient amount of energy for each of the important scientific experiments on-board. In order for this to work the power system needs to acquire enough energy throughout its mission to power the space craft but also be able to store a sufficient amount of power to endure periods of eclipse and seasonal variations. One way of achieving this is by having solar cells covering the satellites surface which by the photo-voltaic effect converting light into energy. A concept on determining how much power is feasible and theoretically possible to acquire throughout a orbit presented in this thesis in the form of a software code which will simulate the spacecrafts orbit, the suns position on the sky, periods of eclipse, current generated of solar cells and evidently the amount of power. The Miniature Student Satellite, abbreviated MIST is the spacecraft under study. The orbital model is based on the Standard General Perturbations Satellite Orbit Model 4[3][37], the sun position vector is based on the Astronomical Almanac [8][28][4]. Simulations show that during fixed attitudes of the spacecraft in different orientations throughout a full year can generate a sufficient amount of power in order to survive. However in order to develop more exact results a power budget for each and every part of the satellite needs to be performed as well as hardware testing and integration with current software.