INTERPRETATION OF HIGH-VOLTAGE SOLAR-ARRAY DISCHARGE EXPERIMENTS

High voltage operation of photovoltaic power sources in low Earth orbit is limited by the probability of discharges in the array. These discharges are initiated by an interaction between the negative voltage portions of the array (relative to the space plasma potential) and the space plasma environment. Laboratory experiments have been conducted to characterize these discharges. We propose a model that suggests experiments conducted to date have measured transients related to the decharging of the solar cell cover glass as a result of a discharge rather than the discharge itself. The excellent agreement between the experiment data and the analytical predictions argues for the validity of this model. © 1990 IEEE