ABSL AWARDED CONTRACT FOR 100TH SPACECRAFT BATTERY
05th November 2008
ABSL Space Products is celebrating the award of a contract for its 100th spacecraft battery. The company has been selected by Thales Alenia Space to provide the Lithium-ion battery for the Sentinel-3 spacecraft, scheduled for launch in 2012.
This is one of five planned Sentinel missions that form part of the GMES-Kopernikus program being undertaken with funding from the European Union.
ABSL is also contracted by Thales Alenia Space to supply the Lithium-ion battery for the Sentinel-1 mission. Both Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-3 missions require batteries that can power the payload for over twelve years in a LEO orbit.
The Sentinel-1 battery is the larger of the two, with a capacity of 270 Ah and mean discharge voltage of 58V. Both batteries will be integrated onto a spacecraft panel at ABSL and supplied to the customer as fully environmentally tested assemblies.
ABSL has a strong legacy of successful satellite mission support through superior primary and secondary Lithium-ion batteries. Almost fifty of ABSL’s batteries have been launched, dating back to the very first Lithium-ion spacecraft battery on board PROBA-1, a satellite which has recently clocked up its seventh successful year of operation.
During the course of the last few months, ABSL has celebrated the successful launch of several satellites powered by ABSL batteries including Indian’s Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon, the Thailand Earth Observation Spacecraft (THEOS), and five earth observation satellites for RapidEye AG of Germany.
All of these recent launches feature ABSL’s ‘Heritage Lithium-ion solution’ based on the ABSL HC cell. This cell has now achieved 13,000 cell-years of space flight success, and completed over 140 million cell-hours of on-ground life-testing. ABSL continues to prove its commitment to providing customers with power assurance, excellent energy density, and proven space hardware capabilities.
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