Hi all. The ARISSat team seem to have reached the conclusion that the Silver Zinc battery technology is not really suited for an orbiting satellite with a 55 / 35 minute charge and discharge cycle. I wonder if a couple of small Lithium polymer battery packs would be a suitable replacement for ARISSat-2 ? I note that there are safety issues with Li-ion technology, but there are some small battery packs of 10Whr / 20Whr 30Whr modules which have NASA approval for manned space flight.

From the odd snippet of information on the power required during eclipse (is it 7 Watts for 35 minutes) it looks like 20-25% depth of discharge for the 20Whr battery pack. That's probably OK for a 9 month mission ??

Thanks

David G0MRF

http://www.clyde-space.com/documents/1902