DEVELOPMENT OF A PLASMA CHAMBER FOR SOLAR PANEL TESTING

摘要

“Midori II” (ADEOS-II) launched in 2002 ended its operation in 2003 due to malfunction of the solar panel. It was presumed that the failure was caused by electro-static charge / discharge at the solar panel. Through the investigation of the causes and efforts to come up with measures for the future, we concluded that verifications under as accurate space environment as possible and enhancement of ground tests were necessary. Therefore, a plasma chamber was developed for charge / discharge tests to particularly verify low-altitudes earthorbit- satellites' solar panels durability against electro-static discharge. In this chamber, solar panel coupons are irradiated with artificial sunlight under the extreme low temperature and high vacuum environment. And this setting enabled us to conduct charge / discharge tests of actually power generating solar panels. This paper describes developing process and features of this plasma chamber for solar panel testing.