Missions The first use of power systems will be to run the unmanned rovers and scouting missions needed to investigate the geology (or ‘areology') of Mars and scout out a location for the manned Mars base. Such a vehicle will not require much energy storage for the night, since it will not typically be operated in darkness. At dusk, the rover points its solar arrays at the eastern horizon and "goes to sleep," waking up again when the sun rises high enough to power the vehicle. Under contract to NASA, B.D. Hibbs has done a design study on a small Mars rover with a high-efficiency photovoltaic array mounted to the body of the vehicle [9]. While the total power is decreased by using a fixed array rather than one which tracks the Sun, this is more than made up for by the added robustness of the array. Depending on the technology chosen, the array required can be as small as seven square meters. Power requirements can be quite modest - only 275 watts average power (less than a moderate-size toaster), with a night-time ‘sleep' requirement of only 100 watts. Peak power capability of up to 2000 watts are required, though, for difficult tasks such as climbing over large boulders.
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