The modern life is inseparable from power and energy, so are the outer space. Therefore, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration holds the 'BIG Concept Challenge', hoping that before humans can reach Mars, they can use solar energy to generate electricity on Mars At least you can have 40KW of electricity, and can use rocket transport.
NASA expects the solar facility to be rapidly deployable and disassembled to operate on any part of Mars and to overcome solar radiation, seasonality, light flux at different landing sites and sandstorms, as well as how to prevent dust and loading on the photovoltaic surface After the dust removal method, NASA hopes that these solar energy think the future can supply astronauts.
Currently there are still solar-powered vehicles that are movable detectors on Mars, but their solar panels have reduced the photoelectric conversion efficiency due to the excessive accumulation of dust. NASA considered dust as one of the challenges of transport.
Professor Mool Gupta and his team at the University of Virginia in Electrical Engineering are one of five finalists using two large carbon dioxide inflatable balloons about 50 meters in diameter and about 5 to 6 storeys high and flexible on the surface of the balloon, Solar panels, while increasing the amount of light absorption, but also can reduce the accumulation of dust.
Researchers say that in addition to being able to plant solar panels, they also have to pay attention to loading volume and weight, and must come up with something lightweight and roll up for easy portability. A new generation of solar cells is lightweight and flexible A piece of paper rolled up and placed inside the rocket.
As Mars is farther away from the Sun and its amount of sunlight is half that of Earth, Mars's atmosphere is relatively thin and most of its light can be directed into solar panels. The researchers said that NASA needs 40KW of electricity, but the solar power generation is estimated Up to 145KW
Professor Nikolaos Sidiropoulos, of the motor and computer engineering department at Charles L. Brown, University of Virginia, points out that this is an out-of-the-box design that collects the maximum amount of energy and does not build up on the device.
The competition started in August this year, the University of Virginia, Will Ferry, Princeton University, Texas A & M University, University of Colorado, Portland compete for the final places together, the concept of each team will be assembled into 15 pages File, and attach the original project and analysis, the final plan will be selected in March next year.
Among them, Will fierce military school to design an inflatable solar array, the use of carbon dioxide filled tubes in Mars, equipment, eight large rectangular solar panels. Princeton University is the use of origami inspiration, giant monolithic array can be folded and stored.
The Texas A & M University's design includes four 18m diameter solar umbrellas and a retractable umbrella handle, while the University of Colorado Boulder proposes foldable solar photovoltaic that uses a flexible boom to support four circular solar arrays .
Lee Mason, a power and energy storage technology expert at the NASA Technical Task Force, said the proposals give us new ideas for solar deployment and packaging.
