Research on the Discharge and Mitigation Created by Ultra-high Velocity Impact on Solar Array With Applied Power Supply

Solar array is one of the core components of spacecraft exposed to space environment; it is vulnerable to the impact from space debris. Discharge of solar array induced by ultrahigh-speed collision will produce a serious threat to the power supply system of spacecraft in orbit. In order to mitigate discharge effect and simulate working state of solar array effectively during debris impacting on solar array, realizing charging through sunlight irradiance on the ground simulating experiments is very difficult. Therefore, the inverse process of solar energy generation is adopted by applied power supply to solar array. In addition, loading and measurement systems of discharge have been established in a laboratory. A two-stage light gas gun was used to launch the projectile to impact on solar array at the applied power supply voltage of 100 V, and the spacings among the cells of solar array were 0.6, 3, and 5 mm, respectively. The applied power supply system, the diagnostic system of plasma characteristic parameters, and the measuring system of discharge current and voltage were constructed to provide voltage for solar array, diagnosing characteristic parameters of plasma and measuring discharge parameters, respectively. Six sets of experiments have been performed to measure discharge current and voltage induced by plasma during 2A12 aluminum projectile impacting on the solar array with carbon fiber reinforced plastics Al honeycomb sandwich and 2A12 aluminum substrates, respectively. The experimental results showed that the discharge did happen during 2A12 aluminum projectile impacting on solar array, and the discharge current among the cells increased with the increase of the impact velocity under the given experimental conditions. Also, increasing spacings among the cells of solar array could indeed mitigate or inhibit plasma discharge effects created by hypervelocity impact on solar array at the same projectile incident angles and applied power supply.