Risks of low voltage arcs sustained by the photovoltaic power of a satellite solar array during an electrostatic discharge - Solar Arrays Dynamic Simulator

The validation of new solar cell for geostationary satellite use sets the problem of arcing between solar cells triggered by electrostatic discharges (ESD). Tests have been carried out on GaAs solar array samples representative a French telecommunication satellite. The main difficulty of this test is to properly simulate the transient functioning of one string during the first microsecond of an electrostatic discharge. The CNES Solar Simulator with all the physical data we need to take into account to properly simulate de functioning of the string is presented in this paper. (Author)