Selection of Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Antistatic Coating and Its Applicability for Space-Use Solar Arrays

概要

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In recent years, the power generation requirement of spacecrafts has increased in order to load them with many mission devices and to extend their lifetime, hence, high voltages are used. However, such high voltages can cause electrostatic discharges on solar arrays, resulting in damage to the solar arrays. Therefore, we use an antistatic coating, which mitigates the surface charging on solar cells, in order to prevent the discharge. It is considered that an antistatic coating can mitigate surface charging and can prevent discharges on solar cells. The purpose of this research is to develop a coating to mitigate the surface charging applicable to geostationary Earth orbit satellites. We selected a candidate coating with the required surface resistivity and vacuum resistance. Furthermore, we selected a commercial-off-the-shelf antistatic coating after considering the experimental results of charging mitigation performance when simulating the charging condition in space. The candidate agent was coated on a conventional solar array coupon panel, and the charging mitigation performance of the latter was evaluated. We have confirmed a dramatic improvement in charging mitigation performance with this coated conventional solar array coupon.
THE JAPAN SOCIETY FOR AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE SCIENCESの論文