Simu1ation Approach to Determine Position of the Fixed Installed Deployable Solar Panel

Abstract

The popularity, development and promising performance in orbit for small satellite make it’s trends of mission to be run by the satellite become more complex. Since the small satellites may brought payload with higher power requirement to run its mission. This payload may not be able supported by the power system, in which is a combination of solar panel with batteries. Small satellite also has size and mass constraints which made it won’t be able to bring active motion mechanism for the solar panel. A natural question to be answered is where the best installation position (placement) of the deployable solar panel with respect to the body satellite such that the power system can acquire maximal solar energy. This paper proposes simulation based method to determine placement (position) of the fixed installed deployable solar panel system such that maximal power can be provided. To validate this method, simulations data summary is presented in this paper where concerns in two different orbits of satellites and eleven cases that accommodates. Based in the simulation results, options for the position of the fixed installed deployable solar panel is provided.