Nickel-hydrogen batteries power Mars mission

Advanced Battery Technology, Dec 2001

NASA Tech Briefs reports that NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, launched this spring, was expected to arrive at Mars in late October to join the Mars Global Surveyor, which already is in orbit. A probe will search for and analyze various elements of the Martian environment, such as water, ice, mineral deposits, and radiation. The spacecraft - built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California - was powered by a nickel-hydrogen battery that combined two cells built by Eagle-Picher Technologies of Joplin, Missouri.

The 16-ampere-hour battery design combines 11 two-- cell common pressure vessel (CPV) cells and one independent pressure vessel (IPV) cell to achieve the 23-cell equivalent battery. Its function is reserve power for spacecraft operation, used approximately one-third of the time, when solar arrays become eclipsed.

Ron Repplinger, director of the Power Subsystems Group at Eagle-Picher, says his company "has been a continuous source of battery power throughout four decades of space flight missions."

The nickel-hydrogen cell and battery technology also will be used as terrestrial backup power for applications in high-reliability environments such as semiconductors, medical, defense, and telecommunications.