ARC Solar Panel Boards

Overview

The Solar Panel Boards (SPB) are the power generation and external sensor connection for the satellite. The SPB have solar cells and 3 sensors: temperature, luminance, and magnetometer.

Hardware

In orbit, the SPB is expected to generate 2 W on average. The temperature sensors are used to record the temperature during launch for LEDL’s mission and also in orbit. The luminance sensors are helping determine the spectrum in low Earth orbit. The magnetometer is used to measure the magnetic field, which is used for ADCS in determining the attitude of the satellite. The Earth facing side of the satellite has the UHF and S band antennas, which are used by the COMM system to communicate with the ground station.