PHOTOVOLTAIC CATENARY-TENT ARRAY FOR THE MARTIAN SURFACE

To provide electrical power during an exploration mission to Mars, a d eployable tent-shaped structure with a flexible photovoltaic (PV) blan ket is analyzed. The array is designed with a self-deploying mechanism utilizing pressurized gas expansion. The structural design for the ar ray uses a combination of cables, beam, and columns to support and dep loy the PV blanket, Under the force of gravity a cable carrying a unif orm load will take the shape of a catenary curve. A catenary-tent coll ector is self-shadowing, which must be taken into account in the solar radiation calculation. The shape and the area of the shadow on the ar ray has been calculated and used in the determination of the global ra diation on the array. The PV blanket shape and structure dimensions we re optimized to achieve configuration that maximizes the specific powe r (W/kg). The optimization was performed for four types of PV blankets (Si, GaAs/Ge, GaAs CLEFT, and amorphous Si), and four types of struct ural materials (carbon composite, aramid fiber composite, aluminum and magnesium). The combination of carbon composite structural material a nd GaAs CLEFT solar cells produce the highest specific power. The stud y was carried out for two sites on Mars corresponding to the Viking la nder locations. The designs, were also compared for summer, Hinter, an d yearly operation.