Problems of irradiance characteristics measurement of solar simulators for ground spacecraft tests

Abstract

The reliability of both spacecraft as a whole and of their systems is confirmed at the stage of complex ground-based experimental tests, including complex thermal vacuum tests. The thermal state of the test object in thermal vacuum chambers is obtaining, in particular, using a solar simulator. Radiometers based on silicon photoelectric converters are most often used to control the irradiance of a solar simulator under conditions of thermal vacuum tests. At the same time, an analysis of the features of silicon photoelectric converters shows that their direct measurement with the accuracy required for ground-based tests of spacecraft is impossible; their output is nonlinear, depends on the received spectrum, their own temperature and has long-term instability. The achieved measurement accuracy directly depends on the number and accuracy of the tools used and the methods of the necessary correction, of which the mismatch correction between the solar simulator spectrum and the solar spectrum is the most difficult and laborious. At the same time, spectrally nonselective heat flux radiometers are free from the above disadvantages. In the course of the experiment we carried out, the significant dependence of the accuracy of measuring the irradiance with radiometers based on silicon photoelectric converters on the received spectrum was confirmed. The conclusion is made that direct measurement by heat flux radiometers of the irradiance of the solar simulator is most justified under the conditions of thermal vacuum tests.

Keywords

• thermal vacuum tests
• solar simulator
• irradiance
• spectral mismatch
• photoelectric converter
• heat flux radiometer