Design of power systems for extensible surface mobility systems on the Moon and Mars

Abstract

This thesis presents the power system model description and sample studies for extensible surface mobility systems on the Moon and Mars. The mathematical model of power systems for planetary vehicles was developed in order to estimate power system configuration with given mission parameters and vehicle specifications. The state-of-art power source technologies for space application were used for constructing the model; batteries, fuel cells, and photovoltaic systems were considered in this thesis. The Sequential Quadratic Programming method was used to find the optimal power system configurations based on the concept of a previous MIT study. Several case studies on the Moon and Mars were carried out to show the usefulness of the model and to recommend power system configurations for 7-day off-base exploration missions on the Moon and Mars. For the lunar mission, photovoltaic and fuel cell hybrid power systems were suggested. In addition, vehicles with photovoltaic/fuel cell hybrid systems could be operated without recharging when they were driving in shadowed regions. For the Mars mission, both fuel cell single power systems and photovoltaic/fuel cell hybrid systems were acceptable for short missions of only a few days. However, if long, sustainable missions were considered, photovoltaic/fuel cell hybrid systems were required.