Assessment of spacecraft solar array reliability during ground experimental development test

The increase of available power and the lifetime up to 15 years for modern telecommunications satellites significantly actualize the challenge of improving large-sized foldable solar arrays (LF SA) reliability. The reliability of any equipment to be implemented onboard of a spacecraft depends mainly on the quality of their ground experimental test development (GTD). To ensure high quality GTD it is important to accept the correct concept of SA reliability validation, taking into account the specifics of the SA design and the real capabilities of the test facilities. The paper describes constituent parts of the concept allowing validating the large-sized foldable solar arrays reliability at the phase of ground experimental test development. There has been obtained the system of differential equations which describes SA deployment using the off-loading system and, as a result, solving of the differential equations system to estimate errors introduced to the SA elements motion dynamics by the test equipment is given. “Yamal-401” spacecraft SA mechanism reliability has been calculated. The stresses impacting SA mechanism elements during deployment under zero gravity, used during calculation and design of “Yamal-401” spacecraft SA have been defined. The developed methodologies of numerical tests have allowed validating the reliability of all large-scale SA structure elements, under all extreme cases, with regard to the available test facilities. This approach allows performing experimental test development of any large-size SA under development for new generation spacecrafts using existing experimental test facilities and equipment. The results of the research have been used by JSC “Information satellite systems named after academician M. F. Reshetnev” at the phase of ground experimental test of large foldable SA structures for “Express-AM5”, “Yamal-401” spacecrafts and other spacecraft types.