Sandwich module prototype progress for space solar power

Space solar power (SSP) has been broadly defined as the collection of solar energy in space and its wireless transmission for use on earth. This approach potentially gives the benefit of provision of baseload power while avoiding the losses due to the day/night cycle and tropospheric effects that are associated with terrestrial solar power. Proponents have contended that the implementation of such systems could offer energy security, environmental, and technological advantages to those who would undertake their development. Among recent implementations commonly proposed for SSP, the modular symmetrical concentrator (MSC) and other modular concepts have received considerable attention. Each employs an array of modules for performing conversion of concentrated sunlight into microwaves or laser beams for transmission to earth. While prototypes of such modules have been designed and developed previously by several groups, none have been subjected to the challenging conditions inherent to the space environment and the possible solar concentration levels in which an array of modules might be required to operate. The research described herein details our team's efforts in the development of photovoltaic arrays, power electronics, microwave conversion electronics, and antennas for microwave-based “sandwich” module prototypes. The implementation status and testing results of the prototypes are reviewed.     

Early commercial demonstration of space solar power using ultra-lightweight arrays

Space solar power shows great promise for future energy sources worldwide. Most central power stations operate with power capacity of 1000 MW or greater. Due to launch size limitations and specific power of current, rigid solar arrays, the largest solar arrays that have flown in space are around 50 kW. Thin-film arrays offer the promise of much higher specific power and deployment of array sizes up to several MW with current launch vehicles. An approach to early commercial applications for space solar power to distribute power to charge hand-held, mobile battery systems by wireless power transmission (WPT) from thin-film solar arrays in quasi-stationary orbits will be presented. Four key elements to this prototype will be discussed: (1) Space and near-space testing of prototype wireless power transmission by laser and microwave components including WPT space to space and WPT space to near-space HAA transmission demonstrations; (2) distributed power source for recharging hand-held batteries by wireless power transmission from MW space solar power systems; (3) use of quasi-geostationary satellites to generate electricity and distribute it to targeted areas; and (4) architecture and technology for ultra-lightweight thin-film solar arrays with specific energy exceeding 1 kW/kg. This approach would yield flight demonstration of space solar power and wireless power transmission of 1.2 MW. This prototype system will be described, and a roadmap will be presented that will lead to still higher power levels.     

大功率高速激光无线能量信息同传技术

激光通信及激光能量传输技术都以激光为载体,进行空间传输,将能量和携带信息传递给远端设备,在系统构成上具有天然共同点,因此,在同一套系统内实现激光通信/传能两种功能,必将成为未来系统能源信息传输的有效手段,将优化系统构成,提高系统效率。文章研究了激光无线能量信息同传技术,对激光能量信息同传机制、同传机制下激光信号调制解调、高效率光电转换技术,提出高效能量信息同传系统设计方案,研制了火箭地面激光传能通信一体化样机,实现25m传输距离,激光无线供电461W,激光无线通信速率500Mbps,为下一步高效激光无线能量信息同传系统发展提供解决思路。     

激光无线能量传输远场大光斑测试技术

无线能量传输系统作为空间太阳能电站的一个关键部分,其性能直接决定了空间太阳能电站技术的可行性。特别对于激光无线能量传输系统,准确测量激光远场光斑分布是分析和评价激光无线能量传输系统性能的有效手段。针对太阳能发电卫星轨道高、激光传输距离远、接收激光光斑面积大,并且受大气影响,光斑抖动严重,光斑能量分布以及光斑形状测量困难的问题,文章提出了基于光能探测器阵列的大面积激光光斑测试方法,采用光斑分布式测量及能量分布重构方法,完成激光无线能量传输系统远场光斑的测试,具有分布式测量,可灵活布局的特点,通过反演算法能够实现光斑能量密度分布重构,接收激光功率积分求解,光束发散角计算等,功能多样,适应能力强,为激光无线能量传输系统载荷的参数修订,以及在轨飞行任务的评价提供有效依据。     

用于微波无线能量传输的无衍射电磁超表面设计

微波无线能量传输作为一种远距离能量传输技术受到广泛关注,但是电场随着距离增加会快速衰减。为了减缓电场衰减趋势,提高接收端功率,文章推导出了用于产生无衍射波束的相位计算表达式。另外,设计了一款相位覆盖360°,传输系数优于-3dB的相位控制单元,并利用该单元设计了一个口径为500mm的超表面。仿真和实测数据显示,在加载电磁超表面后,电场明显增强,能量更加集中。微波无线传输实验结果表明,在发射总功率为36dBm时,相较于无电磁超表面情况下,接收端接收的能量最大可以提升9倍之多,证明了设计出的电磁超表面助于提高微波传能系统的传输效率。     

Organizing and managing satellite solar power

Building an organization and management structure to create, launch, utilize and protect a satellite solar power energy system will require a global policy for the beneficial use of SSP. The fundamental organizational tasks are: (1) R&D, achieved through a project organization characterized by the integrated management of applied science, development research and construction engineering; (2) investment, generated by a series of groups creating financial vehicles for public and private investment; (3) transmission and distribution, characterized by attention to an engineering and maintenance process emphasizing high reliability; and (4) crisis response, demanding readiness for instant response to potential internal or external scenarios. A differentiated global organization spanning the long timeframe of SSP will need to have a central management core representative of all parts of the organization, with the capacity for self-renewal and re-adaptation. To be successful over its long timeframe, the SSP organization will need to build continuity and public confidence through intergenerational communication, public education, and community outreach. Integrating structures must be created at all levels of the organization, and should encompass joint work tasks and information-sharing among both industrial and government members. Developmental and alliance partners who support the formation and financing of a differentiated satellite solar power organization will share commensurately in the technologies and competencies that are created.     

Cost effectiveness requirements for space power stations

The concept of converting solar energy in orbital space stations and transmitting electrical power to Earth at radio frequency, is receiving increasing attention both in paper studies and experimental and development work. The projects conceived are large in scale and implications and will demand major resources in their development and deployment. In addition to the technological requirements, the problem of reaching international decisions at political levels to fund and operate such systems will be immense. It will therefore be essential to establish as accurately as possible the basic parameters which will lead to a viable project, particularly with regard to economics.

This paper, therefore, examines the requirements which together will determine the appropriate levels of cost effectiveness of space power stations and should assist in establishing critical or sensitive areas which will influence the operational validity of the concepts. The r.f. transmission of electric power to and from, or between, spacecraft may itself have wider implications and is another aspect considered in the paper.

In summary, the paper does not seek to introduce new design concepts, but appraises the situation and exposes indicators concerning cost effectiveness.     

Can power from space compete?

This report summarizes the findings of a report entitled Can Power from Space Compete? produced for NASA by Resources for the Future (RFF). In considering how well satellite solar power (SSP) is likely to compete in the market for electricity from the present to 2020, it finds that neither perceived shortages of fossil fuel nor climate change factors are likely to be major issues in this time frame. Moreover, the high costs of SSP and possible concerns over public health and national security will continue to constrain its development. This does not mean, however, that R&D into the subject should cease; it may well have a future in the short term when applied to non-terrestrial systems. The full report is available at http://www.rff.org.     

新型大尺度空间微波功率发射阵列的考虑

以空间太阳能电站为应用代表的微波功率传输系统中,微波功率发射阵列是其中的核心组成部分。为保证特定传输距离限制下的波束收集效率,目前国际上多种空间太阳能电站方案中收发天线口径都达到了km级以上。在空间构建大尺度的微波功率发射有源相控阵,面临的主要问题有：发射阵列电性能的高要求、发射阵列折叠状态的总体积限制、大功率发射阵列的热控问题。针对这些问题,文章提出了新型大尺度空间微波功率发射阵列的一些研究及设计考虑,主要包括大尺度阵列同源分发倍频的频率分配方案;高效率高集成功率发射组件技术;大尺度阵列相位同步与误差自校正技术;低剖面天线结构及型面误差补偿技术;大型天线3D打印在轨建造方案设想以及空间微波功率发射阵列热控新思路等。文章提出了新型大尺度空间微波功率发射阵列3个方面的6个主要问题,可为空间太阳能电站系统提供可优化、开放性的设计与发展思路。     

国外空间磁场耦合式近场无线能量传输技术发展分析

磁场耦合式近场无线能量传输具有高效率、非接触、无金属触点裸露等优点,对于解决空间非接触供电具有重要应用前景。为了推进空间磁场耦合式近场无线能量传输相关技术的研发和成果转化,文章重点梳理了国外在空间磁场耦合式近场无线能量传输技术的发展路线图,调研近十五年来已经开展的演示验证或技术示范项目,分析国外关键技术方案及指标,提出航天器内设备间厘米级范围内优先采用感应耦合式无线能量传输、航天器间几十厘米到米级范围优先采用谐振耦合式无线能量传输、传输功率需提升至千瓦级以上、传输效率优于85%的发展建议,为未来发展空间磁场耦合式近场无线能量传输技术提供指导。     

无线能量传输的核心功率器部件挑战与进展

微波无线能量传输系统中高功率微波发射、高效率微波整流是共性关键技术，其中高效率微波整流是区别于传统无线系统的专项技术。首先，从两类4种微波功率源国内外典型产品技术方案、成果水平开展论述；系统探讨了二极管、三极管及电真空器件整流技术发展现状及研究热点。其次，针对微波无线传能系统高效率、高动态、高集成、长寿命多功能公用传能建设等技术挑战，提出了应对策略和解决途径；最后，进一步凝练和规划了面向空间高功率微波无线能量传输系统的关键技术、核心产品，并对我国无线功率传输的核心器部件及系统构架做出展望。     

An economic assessment of space solar power as a source of electricity for space-based activities

Those in the space community interested in deploying space solar power (SSP) need to know whether it would make economic sense. This article aims to develop a conceptual model of the economic value of SSP as a source of power to in-space activities, such as spacecraft and space stations. We offer several estimates of the value based on interviews and published data, discuss technological innovations that may compete with or be complementary to SSP, and consider alternative institutional arrangements for government and the private sector to provide SSP.     

动态无线能量传输系统参数化设计与优化

无线能量传输技术以其操作方便快捷、适应快速更换及维修、减少机动作业无缆影响、可快速扩展、大幅减小设备电池质量、无触电危险、极限环境适应性强等特点被广泛应用于各领域。针对给定输入和约束,要求对动态无线能量传输系统的耦合机构尺寸和电路参数进行充分优化设计以满足一定输出功率效率的需求。经过前期对电路和耦合机构磁路的理论及仿真研究,得到了系统各参数变化时将导致系统输出特性随之如何变化的理论依据。基于此,建立了动态无线能量传输系统的参数化设计模型,并进行优化设计流程及步骤,以最简化的计算流程和最少的工作量,实现了动态无线能量传输系统的发射轨道和电路的参数化设计。该研究将对动态无线能量传输系统的多目标多参数化自动最优化设计具有重要的指导意义。     

Strategic, technological and ethical aspects of establishing colonies on Moon and Mars

With the vast experience gained by Aerospace Community in the last five decades, the natural future course of action will be to expand Space Exploration. Our understanding of Moon is relatively better with a number of unmanned satellite missions carried out by the leading Space Agencies and manned missions to Moon by USA. Also a number of unmanned satellite missions and surface rover missions were carried out to Mars by those Space agencies generating many new details about Mars. While the future exploration efforts by global community will also be centered obviously on Moon and Mars, it is noteworthy that already NASA had declared its plans for establishing a Surface Base on Moon and developing the technical infrastructure required. Surface Bases on Moon and Mars give rise to a number of strategic, technical and ethical issues both in the process of development, and in the process of establishing the bases. The strategic issues related to Moon and Mars Surface Bases will be centered around development of enabling technologies, cost of the missions, and international cooperation. The obvious path for tackling both the technological development and cost issues will be through innovative and new means of international cooperation. International cooperation can take many forms like—all capable players joining a leader, or sharing of tasks at system level, or all players having their independent programmes with agreed common interfaces of the items being taken to and left on the surface of Moon/Mars. Each model has its own unique features. Among the technical issues, the first one is that of the Mission Objectives—why Surface Bases have to be developed and what will be the activity of crew on Surface Bases? Surface Bases have to meet mainly the issues on long term survivability of humans on the Mars/Moon with their specific atmosphere, gravity and surface characteristics. Moon offers excellent advantages for astronomy while posing difficulties with respect to solar power utilization and extreme temperature variations. Hence the technical challenges depend on a number of factors starting from mission requirements. Obviously the most important technical challenge to be addressed will be in the areas of crew safety, crew survivability, adequate provision to overcome contingencies, and in-situ resource utilization. Towards this, new innovations will be developed in areas such as specialized space suits, rovers, power and communication systems, and ascent and descent modules. The biggest ethical issue is whether humankind from Earth is targeting ‘habitation’ or ‘colonization’ of Moon/Mars. The next question will be whether the in-situ resource exploitation will be only for carrying out further missions to other planets from Moon/Mars or for utilization on Earth. The third ethical issue will be the long term impact of pollution on Moon/Mars due to technologies employed for power generation and other logistics on Surfaces. The paper elaborates the views of the authors on the strategic, technical and ethical aspects of establishing Surface Bases and colonies on Moon and Mars. The underlying assumptions and gray areas under each aspect will be explained with the resulting long-term implications.     

利用等离子体通道实现空间太阳能无线能量传输

空间太阳能电站是高效利用太阳能的有效途径,受到了国际的广泛关注。空间无线能量传输技术是空间太阳能电站的关键技术之一。文章首先分析了微波与激光无线能量传输技术的问题,根据空间太阳能传输的具体需求进一步提出基于等离子体通道的无线能量传输技术,并对基于此项技术的空间太阳能传输系统进行了论证,完善并发展了空间太阳能传输模型。基于等离子体通道的无线能量传输技术为多个领域的能量补给提供了新颖的技术途径,是具有广阔应用前景的战略选择。     

Microwave policy issues for solar space power

This article reviews the three major policy issues likely to arise from an SSP system: environmental safety, frequency allocation and prevention of interference with other frequency-using activities. Supporters of SSP must make sure that their case is heard clearly at the ITU, but they must also do more to promote public awareness of the technology's potential benefits in order to counter inappropriate use of the Precautionary Principle by anti-technology groups. The strengthening of standard-setting groups world-wide will also assist this process.     

An erasure coding-based loss-tolerant file delivery protocol for deep spacecommunications

In deep space communications, huge delay, asymmetric bandwidth, large BER and packet loss ratio and intermittent link hinder the adoption of terrestrial transmission protocols. To decrease file delivery time, consultative committee for space data systems (CCSDS) file delivery protocol (CFDP) replaces acknowledge (ACK) by negative acknowledge (NAK) and simplifies the procedures of link establishment and link removal. However, feedback information cannot be avoided in CFDP; hence the file delivery performance cannot be further improved. Motivated by the idea of erasure coding, a one-way reliable transmission protocol named loss-tolerant file deliver protocol (LTFDP) that is suitable for deep space long-range file deliveryis proposed in this paper. For LTFDP, if a certain percent of the data segments interweaved by explorers is received, the original data can be de-interweaved successfully by Earth stations; hence reliable transmission is accomplished without NAK or ACK. Obviously, the Earth stations have enough power and memory resources for the iteration process of de-interweaving. In a shorter distance communications scenario such as from the Moon to the Earth, performance of LTFDP is greatly impacted by file size and transmission rate. In contrast, propagation delay is the main factor of file delivery time in a longer distance communication scenario, e.g. from the Mars to the Earth. This paper demonstrated that LTFDP can not only diminish file delivery time greatly and improve goodput by feedback-reduced transmission, but also improve the reliability of deep space communications.     

Space solar power vs space communications

To meet the future needs of energy on Earth, the transmission of solar power from space is being extensively studied. Since the power station will occupy a position in the geostationary orbit and will use radio frequency spectrum for transmission of energy to Earth, the relative benefits of space solar power and space communications should be considered. The resource allocation of orbit-spectrum to a power station requires a sacrifice from space communications as they both utilize similar limited resources. The power station is to energy what communication is to information. While the cost of energy is going up, the cost of information processing, storage, sharing and transmission is decreasing. Also, increased means of communication are used as a measure of energy conservation. With the advent of computer communication and the Large Scale Integrated (LSI) microprocessors, the technique of multiple access, message switching and satellite switching can be cost-effectively combined. The computer-satellite communication will allow information resource sharing among large numbers of users besides the conventional application of space communications. Since space communication means work effectively in many other areas where ultimate energy use and conservation is possible, the space solar power will not be able to compete or substitute on the basis of equality and social benefits. But, as the transmission technology is similar for both areas, the R & D effort for solar power will certainly increase efficiency and reduce cost for space communications.     

Compact high-voltage accelerators of charged particles in space experiments

Some general problems of design and application of compact devices for the generation of pulse electric fields at a megavolt range in space experiments are discussed. The prospect of various applications of powerful electron beams for active diagnostics of upper layers of atmosphere, radiation belts and the earth's magnetic field is also reviewed. The proposed development of powerful impulsive devices is dictated by limitations of energy resources in spacecraft together with a need to get a good signal-to-noise ratio for reliable data recording. Compact devices which directly transform electric energy of a low-voltage source (solar batteries, chemical elements, nuclear reactor, etc.), into the energy of a megavolt charge particle beam of high impulsive power appear as reliable means for satisfying these requirements. In this paper, the basic practical schemes of energy transformation procedures are considered and the optimal operation parameters of high-voltage storage and transformer systems are discussed. Proper application of combined high-voltage insulation techniques result in the development of experimental models of heavy-current electron beam accelerators capable of generating beams of 300–500 kV, 3–5 kA, with a pulse duration of 15 × 10⁻⁹ sec at a frequency of 10 Hz. Typical applications of electron beam accelerators including the generator of electron-beam-controlled discharge laser beams are also described.     

空间太阳能电站反向波束控制仿真分析

分析几项重要的空间太阳能电站反向波束控制技术研究工作,提出空间太阳能电站微波无线能量传输(MPT)分系统的初步方案和主要参数,在此基础上建立空间太阳能电站微波波束发射和反向波束控制仿真模型,重点分析发射天线子阵列的微波馈电相位误差、频率误差和姿态误差等因素对于系统传输效率的影响,相关结论将为微波无线能量系统的设计和微波无线能量传输技术的研究提供参考。