The Sun is the space industry’s biggest source of energy, but total dependence is never a healthy way to operate. Fortunately, Space Power can offer you a ‘second sun’ for your space exploration technology to fall back on.
Satellites and other forms of space exploration technology are the silent workhorses of our modern world. Currently, they rely heavily on solar energy to power their instruments and systems. In fact, as of 2021, around 90% of small-scale satellites sourced their power from photovoltaics (solar panels). Furthermore, solar power is the single most prolific power solution across the industry, regardless of scale. Take the International Space Station (ISS), for example. It boasts the largest solar panels ever seen on a spacecraft (2,500 m2), generating a whopping 200 kW of power.
But here’s the catch: despite all the advancements in solar charging tech, there are still glaring inefficiencies in the way that the industry operates. This unnecessarily costs companies – perhaps companies like yours – millions of dollars per mission. Allow us to explain…
Space exploration technology is too reliant on the Sun
To this day, smaller spacecraft like CubeSats are hamstrung by limited power availability. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, they are too small to carry large solar panels with higher capacities, and secondly, only the sides facing the Sun are able to draw energy from light. To put things into context, depending on the mission parameters and orbital inclination, nearly half of a CubeSat’s operational time is likely to be spent in shadow. In other words, these satellites have a limited amount of charge and a lack of opportunity to replenish it.
Ultimately, this lack of power capacity and charging opportunity means that CubeSats can only carry out mission operations for less than 5% of their total lifetime. For the rest of it, they’re reduced to nothing more than expensive pieces of space junk. It’s like buying an advanced supercar and discovering that its fuel tank is the size of a thimble.
How power deficiency complicates your missions
The energy problem becomes even more troubling once you see how it impacts mission efficiency. Typically, due to the inherent energy shortfalls built into the current way space exploration technology is used, payload power on a satellite is capped at 100W (which is roughly equal to just two lightbulbs). Any attempts to exceed these limits pushes the batteries into regulated minimum battery levels and risks critical power failure, which will almost certainly result in complete loss of satellite control.
As such, modern satellites not only have a small window of active life, but are also operationally restricted by their lack of access to the necessary power reserves. So, to keep things running smoothly, satellite operators must launch whole fleets of these CubeSats, driving up the cost of operations and contributing to orbital overpopulation.
So far, this is the best solution that the existing industry stakeholders have been able to come up with. And yet, when you boil it down to its core logic, it hardly stands up to scrutiny. It’s like splitting all of your company’s data onto hundreds of USB sticks rather than hosting it on one central server.
Overall, this large-scale demonstration of waste, posed against the promised boom in CubeSat use, really sums up the urgent need for new power solutions.
Are there any alternatives to solar power?
If solar energy poses this many problems, you might be wondering if there are any serious alternatives. Well, other ideas about how to power space exploration technology have indeed been attempted over the years. Perhaps most famously, all of the Apollo missions, mars rovers, and deep space explorers have adopted alternative sources such as nuclear batteries. However, these typically offer relatively low levels of power over an extremely long duration, using the steady heat generated to induce a voltage and enable current to flow through their power systems.
Consequently, nuclear solutions are only suitable for very specific circumstances and are also fundamentally limited in terms of power output and efficiency. Plus, although nuclear reactors are a viable technology, the associated safety risks and aspects of environmental responsibility mean that it’s not a type of technology which many companies feel comfortable getting involved with.
For all of those reasons, solar power remains the number one choice of energy source in the space industry, and it will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future. As such, the technology’s shortcomings must be addressed quickly. Fortunately, that’s where we come in.
How can Space Power supercharge your solar panels?
We can’t simply look to the Sun for answers. After all, it isn’t getting any brighter. Instead, at Space Power, we believe that a new orbital power infrastructure, based around our patented and proven laser technology, is the key to solving the industry’s most urgent questions.
A few years ago, Space Power developed the first universal laser powerbeam, which essentially means that we have engineered the light to work with any solar panel – regardless of its specification, even as its properties change over time. This powerbeam can act as a ‘second sun’, providing satellites and other space exploration technology with an additional source of energy, enabling them to boost their charge when in sunlight and access power on demand during eclipse periods.
In practice, that would allow smallsats in Earth’s orbit to operate far more regularly than is currently the case. Furthermore, laser-based lunar charging operations would be able to take place throughout the lunar night, which equates to more than 50% of a satellite’s total mission time. Geosatellites would stand to benefit too, as the support received from our laser charging technology would prevent the early degradation of their batteries or solar panels, thus extending the satellite’s lifetime.
So, if you would like to learn more about how Space Power can enhance the operational capacities of your satellites, while also helping to reduce the ever-growing amount of space junk in our atmosphere (and save you money in the long-run), please do get in touch.
