Nowadays, the electrical power supply in satelites is provided by solar cells.
Because of the rotation of the satelites around the Earth, two different
regimes can be pointed out : the insolation time (the day) and the Earth
shading time (the night). The use of batteries is then useful in order
to insure a constant electrical production in the satelite. During the
day time, the solar panels provide enough energy to the satelitte and to
charge the batteries. As soon as the satelitte is in the night, the
batteries relaied the solar panels.
The new generations of satelites are more and more gourmandes. One
of the problem is to manage to keep the electric supply to the same
level all the time for those new electrical ogre. As far as the daytime
is concerned, that just means to build bigger solar panel or to upgrade the
technology linked to the rendement of those panels. On the other hand,
batteries with higher electrical capacity are requested. The problem
is that batteries are heavy. In space technology, 'weighty' is closely
related to the word 'money'.
In this framework, superconductors magnetic energy
storage
(smes
) represents an interesting solution. It considers a superconducting
coils which is able to store electric power. Such a coil is able to
transport an electrical current without any losses. That means that
the magnetic field generated by the coil exactely behaves as a permanent
magnet. The electrical energy such stored can be restituted to the
system afterwards.
In the late '80s, High-Tc superconductors has been discovered and opened
creative minds to new applications. Those so-called high critical temperature
of about 100K (-173C) allow to simplify cryogenic technics associated to superconductors.
Those different features strongly indicate that superconducting solutions
are technically and commercially interesting for orbital mission in the next
10 years.
The project proposed by SUPRAS to the wallon region is divided in 3 parts
:
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