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Power From Solar Panels, How do MER generate so much power?
pioneer
post Aug 15 2005, 03:16 PM
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At the beginning of their missions, both Spirit and Opportunity generated 800 watts of power. I did some searching from the web, and the solar panels I found sold commercially only generate 125 watts at most. I'm far from being an expert in solar power, but how could the solar panels on MER generate far more power on Mars than ones available here on Earth? Does NASA have more advanced solar panels that are not available commercially?
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djellison
post Aug 15 2005, 03:27 PM
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Yes - they are very very expensive, very very efficient cells - but - they only generate roughly 140 watts at any one time.

The 600 - 800 values are watt-HOURS....i.e. the equiv of 100 watts for 8 hours. It's a cumulative total ammount of power generated in an entire sol.

Given 10 hours of sunlight - a 125 watt array would generate 1250 Watts in a day - ignoring the angle of incidence.

Doug
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Posts in this topic
- pioneer   Power From Solar Panels   Aug 15 2005, 03:16 PM
- - djellison   Yes - they are very very expensive, very very effi...   Aug 15 2005, 03:27 PM
|- - helvick   Doug's right. The cells themselves are very ef...   Aug 15 2005, 03:55 PM
- - djellison   Given RTG power - MSL is expected to have about 22...   Aug 15 2005, 04:03 PM
|- - helvick   QUOTE (djellison @ Aug 15 2005, 05:03 PM)Give...   Aug 15 2005, 04:24 PM
- - Chmee   With that much power they could add a light source...   Aug 15 2005, 04:58 PM
|- - Marcel   QUOTE (Chmee @ Aug 15 2005, 04:58 PM)With tha...   Aug 16 2005, 07:16 AM
- - pioneer   Thanks guys.   Aug 15 2005, 05:23 PM
- - deglr6328   The current CCDs on the MERs are also sensitive to...   Aug 16 2005, 07:35 AM
- - edstrick   One of the zillion things I wish the rovers had is...   Aug 16 2005, 12:01 PM

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