ABSL Batteries Power Another Year For PROBA Mission
22nd October 2007
The spacecraft PROBA-1* has notched up another successful year in orbit, making a total of six years. The planned mission life was only two years, but here we are six years later and it’s still going strong, thanks in part to the long life performance of ABSL’s Lithium-ion batteries.
Confidence in Lithium-ion battery technology has progressed a long way since the time that PROBA-1 was first launched into a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on 22nd October 2001. LEO is considered to be a challenging environment for spacecraft batteries, because it requires a very large number of discharge cycles (up to 5,000 in each year). This therefore necessitates very careful modelling of performance over mission life. The PROBA-1 mission has generated excellent in-orbit data as further validation of ‘BEAST’ and ‘LIFE’, the Lithium-ion battery performance prediction tools which are routinely used at ABSL to model such battery performance.
PROBA-1 was ground breaking, in fact, because it was the first LEO mission to fly a Lithium-ion battery - another first for ABSL!
Since those first cautious steps into low earth orbit, the combination of ABSL’s software prediction tools and its rapidly accumulating mass of life-test data (more than 80,000 LEO cycles to date) has encouraged customers to select ABSL’s batteries for several other LEO missions with durations in excess of ten-years (2 of which have now been launched). The validation of ABSL’s software tools by in-orbit data, enabled by the continued success of missions such as PROBA-1, has been the subject of presentations at high-profile industry conferences, such as the NASA Battery Workshop.
As an industry leader in space battery technologies, ABSL’s batteries have now been launched on seventeen LEO missions with another eighteen supplied and awaiting launch. In total 30 spacecraft have now been launched into various orbits powered by ABSL Lithium-ion power sources. Our first Lithium primary battery flew on the recent FOTON M3 mission, the subject of another news item.
So ABSL is very grateful for PROBA-1’s first small step into LEO. Happy sixth birthday, PROBA-1, and thank you to all those who contributed to it reaching such a venerable age!
Contact us if you would like to hear more
*PROBA-1 is part the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) General Support and Technology Programme (GSTP) and was supplied by Verhaert Space of Belgium (now a QinetiQ company). Its primary payload is an imaging spectrometer for Earth observation. This instrument exploits the spacecraft’s autonomy and high-performance attitude control and pointing capabilities. (Source ESA)
-ENDS-
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Notes To Editors:
ABSL Space Products (formerly AEA Technology Space)
ABSL Space Products is a trading name of ABSL Power Solutions Limited, which is one of nine companies acquired by Coller Capital from AEA Technology plc in October 2005. This change offers ABSL Space Products a huge opportunity to grow and develop the business to achieve its ambitions.
ABSLs Space Heritage Black Body Systems
ABSL Space Products has a substantial heritage in the design and construction of blackbody systems for both space and ground based applications. The company has a specialist team of scientists and engineers who have been designing radiometric calibration sources for over fifteen years. The technology originated from an eight-year development by the UK Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) for the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) instrument. The technology was licensed to ABSL Space Products and, following further internal research and development, has developed into a very successful product line.
EUMETSAT Met-Op Satellite System
Metop-A, the first of three satellites of the EUMETSAT Polar System (EPS), was launched at 16:28 UTC on 19 October 2006, from Baikonor Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On 15 May 2007, after about 6 months in commissioning, the satellite was officially declared operational.
The Metop satellites carry on board a set of state-of-the-art sounding and imaging instruments that offer improved remote sensing capabilities to both meteorologists and climatologists. The Metop series is part of the Initial Joint Polar-Orbiting Operational Satellite System (IJPS) constellation, along with the NOAA-N and -N’ satellites. Under the IJPS, EUMETSAT and NOAA have agreed to provide instruments for each other’s satellites. Other partners are the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) of France.
The Metop satellites carry a payload of eight instruments for observing the planet, together with a range of communications and support services. A core set of instruments for atmospheric sounding and earth imaging is identical to those flown on the NOAA satellites.
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