{"id":66986,"date":"2021-06-08T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/?p=66986"},"modified":"2021-06-10T10:16:36","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T14:16:36","slug":"nasa-awards-utoledo-engineers-grant-to-enhance-solar-power-conversion-for-mars-moon-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/06_08_2021\/nasa-awards-utoledo-engineers-grant-to-enhance-solar-power-conversion-for-mars-moon-missions","title":{"rendered":"NASA Awards UToledo Engineers Grant to Enhance Solar Power Conversion for Mars, Moon Missions"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team of engineers in The University of Toledo College of Engineering is working with NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to more reliably power spacecraft using the sun\u2019s energy on future missions to Mars and the moon.<\/p>\n

The electricity generated by solar panels aboard a spacecraft is used to provide power for a number of systems, including propulsion and navigation.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Daniel Georgiev and Dr. Raghav Khanna received a three-year, $240,000 grant from NASA to investigate how to make solar power conversion circuitry more resilient and tolerant to space-related radiation.<\/p><\/div>\n

Before the solar-derived electricity is integrated with those systems, it must first pass through an intermediary circuit, or a \u201cpower converter,\u201d that conditions the electricity coming from the solar panel so that it is compatible with the propulsion and navigation systems.<\/p>\n

However, cosmic rays that float in space and contain ions are disrupting the performance of this power converter, causing radiation-related failures.<\/p>\n

NASA awarded Dr. Daniel Georgiev and Dr. Raghav Khanna, both associate professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a three-year, $240,000 grant to investigate how to make the power conversion circuitry more resilient and tolerant to space-related radiation, which degrades its performance and results in power loss and system downtime.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are honored and excited that our research will contribute to NASA\u2019s goal of putting more exploratory devices and electrical power on Mars,\u201d said Khanna, who has done prior work with NASA on power electronics and semiconductor studies. \u201cEver since I was a kid, it has been a dream to work with NASA and maybe someday walk on the moon like Neil Armstrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using a solar array simulator in their laboratory, high-speed precision computers and guidance from NASA, Georgiev and Khanna are modeling why the circuits are failing.<\/p>\n

The simulator emulates the characteristics of solar arrays used in space and provides power to a power converter circuit built by the UToledo team and NASA engineers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re analyzing how the radiation penetrates the circuit and what causes these devices to degrade,\u201d Georgiev said.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the team will study the degradation mechanisms in a particular application relevant to NASA by developing a power converter that allows the solar panels aboard NASA spacecraft to continuously extract maximum power from available sunlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the spacecraft is moving around and goes behind a celestial body, maximum available power tends to change rapidly,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cOn the moon, lunar dust can also obscure the panel from the sun, leading to rapid changes in available power. Whether in deep space or in lunar missions, we need to develop a control algorithm to make sure we can always extract maximum available power from solar panels at a much greater efficiency while exhibiting improved radiation tolerance, allowing uninterrupted exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Daniel Georgiev and Dr. Raghav Khanna, associate professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received a three-year, $240,000 grant to investigate how to make solar panel power conversion circuitry more resilient and tolerant to space-related radiation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":875,"featured_media":66988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66986"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66986"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66995,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66986\/revisions\/66995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}