ABSL Selected to Supply Lithium-ion Battery for GMES Sentinel 1
18th June 2008
ABSL Space Products has been selected by Thales Alenia Space Italy to provide the Lithium-ion battery for the Sentinel-1 spacecraft, scheduled for launch in 2010. This is the first of five planned Sentinel missions that form part of the GMES program - Global Monitoring for Environment and Security - a set of Earth observation missions co-funded by ESA and the European Commission. GMES represents the European answer to the ever-increasing requirements of environmental control, and thus provides an important contribution to environmental policies at a global level.
The 156 Ah (4.5kWh) Lithium-ion SDO Battery Supplied to NASA GSFCThales Alenia Space Italy is responsible for the design, development and integration of the satellite that will carry a C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). It will provide scientists with a long-term continuous SAR data set stretching back to the launch of ERS-1 in 1991.
ABSL already has seven batteries in orbit powering long duration SAR missions. These can be particularly demanding upon batteries in terms of the number of discharge pulses and the high current rates that must be accommodated.
The Sentinel-1 spacecraft will weigh over 2,000 kilograms and is designed to operate for seven and a quarter years in a LEO orbit with a possible extension to twelve and a quarter years. During twelve and a quarter years it will orbit the Earth around 65,000 times and during each orbit the battery will be charged and discharged between three and twelve times. The battery is required to support the high current pulses from the SAR instrument during both eclipse and in sunlight. The battery can store 15.5 kilo-Watt hours of energy and weighs over 140 kilograms.
The ABSL Space Products modular approach has enabled the battery to be configured as ten individual units and easily accommodated on a single spacecraft panel. The integration and test of the battery, harnesses and thermal blankets onto a spacecraft panel will also be performed by ABSL.
ABSL Space Products Director Rob Spurrett said “This contract is important to us because it builds on our existing heritage on SAR missions and demonstrates the scalability of our concept to battery sizes in excess of fifteen kilo-Watt hours.”
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