Discovery Universe • ANALYSIS • CHANDRAYAAN-2 ROVER discovery Universe Estimation of Thermodynamic Equilibrium Temperature of Chandrayaan-2 Rover Solar Panel during Long Lunar Nights

• Main Authors: Raghu Meetei N, Sankaran M, Alok Kumar Shrivastava, Anil Agarwal, Ranganath S
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chandrayaan-2 Lunar Rover; Solar panel; Equilibrium temperature; View factors. Nomenclature; dQ; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.390.8841; http://www.discovery.org.in/PDF_Files/du_20130703.pdf

The rover proposed in the mission Chandrayaan-2, to primarily carry out in-situ scientific experiments on Moon surface, is planned to land near lunar south pole where the number of sunlit days (nights) vary with different lunar site latitudes. Extent of lunar night/s can be from 15 earth days (at 60 o south latitude landing site) to 20 earth days at 88 o south latitude. Thus, rover solar panel will be undergoing a continuous cold lunar night spanning 20 earth days unlike 72 minutes of peak eclipse duration for geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) spacecrafts. This paper presents a detailed methodology to arrive at thermodynamic equilibrium temperature of Chandrayaan-2 rover solar panel during the long lunar nights for different landing sites and results are presented.