Mission Analysis Orbit Selection In order to have a valuable commercial demonstration, the amount of power delivered to users shall be supplied during a relatively high percentage of the time. In this respect the geostationary orbit can be selected, associated to a near equatorial rectenna. Launcher Since the spacecraft will weight a few tens of tons (typically 20 to 50), an heavy lift launcher will be necessary. On the other hand, this demonstration is relatively short term, so that the launcher that might be used will stay in the range of present ones. Consequently, Energia can here be envisaged: with a mass of 18 tons into geostationary orbit, the spacecraft could be launched in two or 3 times and robotically assembled into GEO. Beaming Analysis A preliminary analysis have been performed, using the following differences with respect to the $800 M demonstration: • solar array: 2500 m^ instead of 1000 m^ • No batteries used for additional power generation • Use of Gallium Arsenide solar cells with 15% after 10 years instead of 10% efficiency Silicon cells after 5 years • Phased array: use of a 50m x 50m array instead of 10m x 10m • Altitude: 36000 km instead of 1000 km • Rectenna: 6 km x 6 km instead of 1 km x 1 km, based on 30 m diameter motionless concentrators prior to rectification. This gives in the range of 100 kW on ground. The detailed power budget is indicated in Table 10.3.15. Table 10.3.15 Power Budget_____________________
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