Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) are going to supply power for the NASA Galileo and Ulysses spacecraft now scheduled to be launched in 1989 and 1990. The duration of the Galileo mission is expected to be over 8 years. This brings the total RTG lifetime to 13 years. In 13 years, the RTG power drops more than 20 percent leaving a very small power margin over what is consumed by the spacecraft. Thus it is very important to accurately predict the RTG performance and be able to assess the magnitude of errors involved. The paper lists all the error sources involved in the RTG power predictions and describes a statistical method for calculating the tolerance.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Improved techniques for predicting spacecraft power


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    IECEC ''87 ; 1987 ; Philadelphia, PA, United States


    Publication date :

    1987-01-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English







    Predicting Aircraft and Spacecraft Acoustics

    Kiris, Cetin / Barad, Mike / Housman, Jeffrey et al. | NTRS | 2018


    Spacecraft Test Techniques

    Garrett, Henry B. / Whittlesey, Albert C. | Wiley | 2012