Battery Prototype

October 29, 2024

Author: Tristan Tarnowski

During each orbit of Earth, MARMOTSat spends part of the time in sunlight and part of the time in eclipse. The eclipse period is the portion of the orbit when the spacecraft is in Earth’s shadow and doesn’t receive direct sunlight. During this time, the solar panels don’t generate any power, so the battery provides the energy required to keep the spacecraft running. When the sun rises again, the battery recharges so that it has enough energy for the next eclipse.

The fully assembled battery pack prototype 

The battery for MARMOTSat is heavily based on the flight-proven design used for ORCASat, which you can read more about here. It uses the same Lithium Titanate Oxide cells - the main difference is that since MARMOTSat draws more power, the battery uses eight cells instead of four.

The mechanical components for the battery were designed by mechanical engineering student Kai Michaud and manufactured by Rainhouse. As soon as we received the parts, we assembled a prototype to make sure everything fit together as intended. As you can see, Rainhouse did a great job on the machining - the parts look great, and the tolerances are spot on. This prototype will undergo a wide range of tests to verify the design before we assemble the flight model next year.