Space is expansive, but it’s full of activity, including 10,000 active satellites, two fully functioning space stations, and numerous commercial space ventures. Globally, countries are pouring more than $117 billion into space programs, hoping to unlock new opportunities for innovation, advancement, and exploration.
The Power Problem
It’s a challenging task, and part of the problem is fundamental: access to reliable electricity.
Without reliable electricity, satellites can’t function properly, astronauts cannot perform critical operations, and space stations can’t maintain life support systems.
Ensuring consistent electricity supplies from hundreds or thousands of miles away isn’t easy. Engineers must grapple with extreme temperature fluctuations, radiation, and other environmental conditions. To date, a combination of solar technology, battery advancements, and other sources have powered space exploration, but we need a better, cheaper, and more scalable solution.
When generating electricity in space, the most important features include:
- Efficiency: Teams must generate as much electricity as possible with the amount of sun available in space.
- Cost: Congressional resource allocation has not kept pace with NASA budget requests, requiring the agency (and the many programs it funds) to do more with less.
- Weight: The weight of solar cell materials directly impacts the cost. Every kilogram of weight reduction produces significant cost savings.
- Radiation Tolerance: Space-based solar power products are bombarded by high-energy protons and cosmic rays, which damage materials and diminish effectiveness.
Solar power in space has been around for more than half a century. Since space-based solar panels don’t have to contend with clouds, atmosphere, or nighttime, they collect and convert substantially more energy than earth-based solar panels.
Initially, the dominant solar technology was silicon-based solar cells before these were replaced by III-V semiconductor cells, a highly efficient but very expensive material. However, III-V solar technology has sometimes given way to silicon-based solar cells, which are less efficient but also less expensive to produce, distribute, and deploy in space.
Now, we are on the verge of another technological breakthrough for solar technology in space. Perovskites, a class of thin-film semiconductors made from abundant, low-cost raw materials and the leading technology in PV 3.0, have exciting potential for electricity generation in space.
Perovskites in Space
Perovskites are often produced as inks or solutions that can be coated onto various substrates that perform as well as conventional silicon solar panels. This technology has enormous implications for everything from electricity production for next-generation satellites to the potential for future space habitats.
The technology’s benefits for power production in space include:
- Perovskites perform well in high radiation: Perovskites exhibit a self-healing phenomenon, a property discovered by Caelux in a partnership with Caltech in 2018. After radiation exposure, the performance of these devices degrades slightly but fully recovers after a daily temperature annealing. Caelux is continuing its partnership with Caltech and has recently deployed its perovskite solar cells in space as part of Caltech’s ALBA project.
- Perovskites are lightweight: Much of the weight associated with solar panels is in the glass. Perovskites may require a much thinner/lighter coverglass because the material is much more radiation tolerant, so it doesn’t require heavy protective barriers.
- Perovskites are thin and flexible: While a typical silicon solar cell is 100-150 microns thick, a perovskite cell typically measures just one micron. This thinness offers significant advantages for space applications. For example, perovskites can be placed on flexible substrates like thin mylar or plastic. These materials can be rolled up, launched into space, and unraveled once in orbit, reducing overall weight and lowering the cost of generating electricity in space.
- Perovskites are cheap to produce: They are low-cost due to their minimal material requirements and precursor availability from other common chemical industries, making them easy to procure.
Possibilities Abound
With more satellites launching every day and our future aspirations becoming increasingly more ambitious, solving the power generation problem in space is fundamental to a thriving space ecosystem with implications for our efforts beyond our hemisphere and here at home.
Perovskites offer a promising solution, combining efficiency, radiation tolerance, lightweight design, and cost-effectiveness. While the full scope of future space developments remains to be seen, the potential of perovskites to solve the persistent challenge of power generation in space is undeniably exciting.
From our numerous projects with defense and government programs to support the work being deployed by top companies with a long history of space exploration and applications, the Caelux team is excited to be a key power player in making the capabilities of utilizing outer space more accessible, reliable, and reachable than ever before.
