Large Solar panels and Van-Allen belts

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vgorelik

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Would it be possible to assemble a structure equipped with a large (ISS-type) solar power-generating plant @ LEO and raise its orbit to a circumlunar crossing Earths magnetosphere and its radiation belts? I am not as much concerned about the radiation damage to the panels and electronics as to the spurious currents that may be induced in the on-board high current buses. If that were indeed a problem, than would it help if the system’s high-current circuits were laid in a single plane that is aligned with the plane of Earth’s magnetic field while the assembly is towed up?<br /><br />Will we ever need an ISS-type structure around Moon?<br />
 
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vulture2

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A number of satelites with relatively large solar panels have operated in GEO, so th problems are not insurmountable. <br /><br />Whether a permanent manned station in lunar orbit is needed probably depends on the volume of commerce between Earth and Moon. If fully reusable shuttles such as are depicted in "2001" ever become feasible, it would make sense. For expendable vehicles like the Orion system it would not be needed.
 
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vgorelik

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Are their panels deployed @ LEO or after the satellite had been placed into the final Earth-synchronous orbit? What is the max photovoltaic power output of these satellites?
 
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thereiwas

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Yes, if you leave the panels folded until arriving at your destination the induced currents when passing thru the V.A. belt would be considerably less. Also you would not want all that floppy stuff deployed with any serious boosting going on.
 
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henryhallam

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I don't think the particles would induce large enough currents to be significant to anything other than low-level signal wiring. My gut feeling is that radiation damage to the PV cells would be much more of a concern.
 
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vgorelik

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My concern was that a large photovoltaic array assumes a huge low-resistance conducting loop designed to carry arrays’ current. When dragged across Earth’s magnetic field the induced current and voltage can become fairly large. Furthermore, considering instabilities of the field, the current may have an AC component and in that case the inductance of the loop cannot be ignored resulting in potentially very high overvoltages and catastrophic arching.<br /><br />But the question was – if we would ever need to assemble a very large photovoltaic array above the V.A. belts, can we do it at LEO or we would need to transport the folded arrays above the Earth magnetosphere and deploy it their.<br /><br />As ThereIWas mentioned, you obviously cannot use high-thrust chemical engine to move large assembly and some sort of gentle ion propulsion would be required.
 
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h2ouniverse

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If you use plasma/ion to climb, you definitely must not deploy at LEO, due to radiation damage. Count about 1% of loss at every pass in V.A. belts (2 passes per day for transfer to GEO). Even with classical chemical propulsion, we always struggle to reduce the number of VA-crossing orbits, to about 4. The actual figure for the loss will depend on your coverglass thickness. But if you increase it too much, the mass penalty is very significant.<br />If you fear spurious, then, why closing the loops? Your power conditioning unit can open the circuits or you can place big relays if you do not want to complexify the conditioning.<br /><br />Best regards.
 
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