Dust Mitigation for Flexible Solar Arrays (DMFlex-ACO)

Tall, vertical solar arrays are under development for the lunar south pole due to their potential to generate power even when the surface is shadowed. Lunar dust is largely dominated by electrostatic forces on the Moon's surface. It can be both positively or negatively charged due to UV radiation or electrons electron and readily sticks to exposed surfaces. Solar arrays operating in charging environments will also become charged, making it even harder to remove dust from their surfaces. As dust coats the surface of arrays, they will experience power generation degradation due to a decrease in light reaching the cells. These large vertical solar arrays, even though they are elevated 10 meters off the ground, will require effective and reliable dust mitigation if they are to maintain power output over long mission lifetimes.

The DMFlex Project is a collaboration between NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) and Maxar Technologies to investigate the efficacy of vibromechanical dust mitigation technology for flexible solar arrays in a simulated lunar environment. Maxar is responsible for designing and fabricated the solar array test coupons with piezoelectric dust removal technologies imbedded. Three separate test articles with varying solar cell technologies and substrates are tested. GRC is responsible for designing and building the hardware to test the dust mitigation strategies in vacuum, developing a novel characterization technique, performing charging investigations in the Plasma Interaction Facility, and performing dust mitigation testing in Vacuum Facility (VF)-13.

A Roll Out Solar Array (ROSA), similar to the solar arrays used on an International Space Station (ISS) flight demonstration in 2017, will be tested in a simulated lunar regolith dust environment. A mechanism similar to that employed on the ISS flight demo, will be used to mechanically pulse the wing to various modes in an attempt to “shake loose" the dust. Test levels and durations will be adjusted for 1G based on correlation between the ISS on-orbit testing and similar testing performed at 1G by DSS.

Future NASA & commercial missions to the Moon, such as Human Landing System (HLS), and Mars will rely on solar arrays for power generation. The landing, as well as other surface activities, may cause dust to impinge and then occlude solar arrays. The amount of dust-related power loss on solar arrays is not well understood, and risk mitigation must be engaged to remove dust to avoid mission-critical losses and optimize specific power. This project's concept enables a simple mechanical, vibrating solution to a flexible solar array dust mitigation, this is cost effective, simple to enact, and can reduce replacement costs.

This project produced the development of a novel characterization technique for analyzing how well the dust mitigation technique worked, called electroluminescence (EL) imaging. Electroluminescence imaging is typically a qualitative technique used to observe cracks and defects in solar cells during batch processing, but when paired with image processing, it becomes a useful quantitative analysis method.

This project produced custom test hardware for depositing dust on solar array test coupons in vacuum in GRC's VF-13 chamber. This hardware can be used again in the future for testing additional coupons and dust mitigation technologies. These products, along with the report of lessons learned, are valuable for future work in this field of technology development.

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