What are tradeoffs between different kinds of power sources for spacecraft?
Every power source available for a satellite or other spacecraft has different strengths and weaknesses. It is often through combining these different power sources that we find truly successful power sources. • Batteries are a reliable, consistent, and well-understood technology. Unfortunately, power demands for satellites tend to be so high that a battery that would be strong enough to power a satellite for the length of a mission would be larger than the satellite itself. Thus, batteries tend to be used as temporary storage points for power from another source. • Solar panels, especially the modern ones, provide abundant power for nearly all a satellite’s needs and are safe and clean to launch. The downsides are: • Solar panels are large and fragile constructions that are vulnerable to damage from external factors (solar flares or meteorites to name two) or even just mechanical failures. • They are rather expensive to build and put into space. • They need to always be pointed at the
