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The Stardust solar arrayThe Stardust program, part of NASA's Discovery Missions was launched on February 7. 1999. It's seven-year mission is to gather interstellar dust and material from the comet Wild-2 and return the material to earth in January 2006. In order to accomplish this mission, the satellite will orbit the sun a total of three times, traversing distances from a little under 1 AU to 2.7 AU. On April 18 2002 , the Stardust spacecraft reached its furthest distance and broke the record for being the farthest spacecraft from the sun powered by solar energy, The Stardust solar panels were built with standard off the shelf 10 Ohm-cm high efficiency silicon solar cells. These solar cells are relatively inexpensive and have shown excellent characteristics under LILT conditions. In order to accommodate the varying temperature and intensity conditions on the electrical power subsystem, an electronic switch box was designed to reconfigure the string length and number of swings depending on the mission phase. This box allowed the use of an inexpensive direct energy transfer system for the electrical power system architecture. The solar panels and electrical power system have met all requirements. Telemetry data from the solar panels at 2.7 AU are in excellent agreement with flight predictions.
Document ID
20060046258
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Gasner, S.
Sharmit, K.
Stella, P. M.
Craig, C.
Mumaw, S.
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
May 11, 2003
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
Stardust interstellar dust Wild-2 solar panels solar cells telemetry

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