Low-cost development of microsatellite solar panels

At the University of Bologna in Forlì, a program has been established for the low-cost design, manufacturing and operation in orbit of microsatellites. This is intended mainly as an educational program, being students directly involved in all mission phases, but also as a technological test bench, where novel technologies and original design and assembly procedures could be tested in orbit with short development times. The on-board power generation system follows the same design guidelines as the materials and manufacturing process are partly borrowed from terrestrial solar power generation technologies. We show here how the adaptation of this technologies, made in order to let the spacecraft solar arrays to withstand the harsh space environment, lead to a reliable product, as demonstrated by the successful environmental (thermal and mechanical) tests performed on solar panel samples produced in the University laboratories.