Lunar Rover Solar Panel

The Lunar Rover Solar Panel is flight hardware built on Pumpkin’s PMDSAS solar panel / solar array technology, configured for the design constraints of a customer’s lunar rover. It features a custom solar cell string configuration, with the ability to incorporate additional customer-specified sensors or other subsystems.

Customers typically dictate the real estate area available for solar cells on a customer-supplied, rover-unique substrate (e.g., a carbon fiber-aluminum honeycomb). Pumpkin combines this information along with rover-driven keep-out zones, connector specifications and electrical requirements to create a solar array with the string layout appropriate for the customer’s requirements. Pumpkin then lays down cells onto the substrate and delivers a tested assembly ready for integration onto the rover.

Particular design and manufacturing emphasis is paid to high reliability, including redundant current paths for every electrical node, all routing performed on a single layer (i.e., no vias), strain-relieved interconnects, and extremely flat laydown via vacuum bagging. With sufficient design flexibility, Pumpkin can quickly create a solar array with minimal NRE, extreme robustness and excellent fill factor. As an example, the lunar panel illustrated on the product page has a very high degree of symmetry, enabling a design with only three different solar cell sub-panels along with a fourth panel responsible for power/signal routing. The entire array is maze-routed on a single layer, with neighbor-to-neighbor solar cell potential differences minimized. This particular 72-cell, 6x10S1P + 1x12S1P solar panel drives a Pumpkin EPSM 1 with two 100Wh BM2 battery modules attached (not included).

Each lunar rover solar panel is a custom design; customers should contact Pumpkin to discuss requirements. Pumpkin’s PMDSAS solar panel/solar array technology has a 100% success rate in LEO and GTO orbits, and is compatible with nearly every possible space construction methodology. CAD is specific to each lunar rover solar panel design; Pumpkin cannot share individual customer designs with other customers.