Battery and Solar Array Sizing for Electro-Optic and Radar Remote Sensing Satellites – A Detail Procedure

This paper proposes a detailed procedure of battery and solar array sizing design for remote sensing satellites in low earth orbit (LEO). The main results of the sizing procedure are the required energy and the estimated mass for the battery pack, as well as the required output power, the estimated dimension, and mass for the solar array. Besides, this research presents how to determine the configuration of the battery pack and the solar array, which is the number of cells in a string and the number of the string in parallel. The merit of the research is a very detailed procedure that can be applied directly for any remote sensing satellite despite the electro-optic (EO) or radar payload satellite. The advantages include the interpolation of solar cell parameters; the battery features are taken into account of solar array sizing; design margin, failure tolerance, and payload peak power are all considered. The method was realized in a Matlab script for an automatic and flexible sizing tool. Simulation software of AGI STK/SOLIS was utilized for verifying the sizing design. The results are illustrated based on planned configurations of an EO satellite and a radar satellite.