Technical Consultation of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Nickel Hydrogen (NiH2) Battery Charge Capacity Prediction

The purpose of the GSFC position paper is to identify critical HST milestone dates for continued science studies followed by the attachment of a re-entry module or a robotic servicing mission. The paper examines the viability of the HST with respect to the NiH2 continued battery charge capacity. In the course of the assessment, it was recognized that the HST battery thermal control system has an average heat dissipation limitation of 30 W per bay per orbit cycle. This thermal constraint will continue to govern options for battery capacity maintenance. In addition, the HST usage represents the longest exposure ofNiH2 batteries to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at the current level of Depth of Discharge (DOD). Finally, the current battery life is at the limit predicted by the manufacturer, Eaglepicher. Therefore, given these factors, the potential exists that the HST battery capacities could radically degrade at any point. Given this caveat on any life extrapolations, the conservative model proposed in the GSFC position paper was viewed by the NESC as having several technical assumptions such as limited utilization of flight battery capacity data, the susceptibility of the proposed prediction method to large variations when supplemented with additional information, and the failure to qualitatively or quantitatively assess life prediction sensitivities. The NESC conducted an independent evaluation of the supporting information and assumptions to generate the predictions for battery capacity loss and practicality of on-orbit battery conditioning.