Energy Crisis in Lunar Orbit

A Lunar Eclipse endangers the power supply of the LunarSAT space probe...
does this mean the end of the mission, or can the engineers secure the survival of the orbiter?

The students will gain a basic understanding of astronomical eclipses, an application of trigonometry as well as knowledge on batteries and solar cells/semiconductors. Judging from the first experiences in Austria, we recommend to use the Energy crisis as soon as the students have learned about sinus/cosinus and Phythagoras law. As there exist well structured solutions, the teacher may decide just to have his/her students work on a single team task and provide the with the results of the missing ones.

Here's the challenge, the students are faced with:

The probe will encounter an eclipse during its flight around the earth/s moon for several hours. For an observer on the earth, this would be a lunar eclipse. Three teams re-engineer the work of the LunarSAT scientists and engineers, and solve the following tasks:

• Team A: Calculation of the duration of the lunar eclipse

• Team B: How much energy can be provided by the solar cells of LunarSAT?

• Team C: How can we minimmize the satellites energy consumption? Which battery type can be used?

Downloads:

[ 1 ] The task sheets for the three teams, the solutions and additional information for teachers. Download the [english version] (1716 kb) or [greek version] (1406 kb)*.

[ 2 ] Transparencies. Download the [english version] (517 kb) or [greek version]*.

[ 3 ] Information on the battery PolyStor ICR-18650. Download the [english version] (43 kb) or [greek version] (158 kb).

In order to be able to read and use the files you will need the following programs: Adobe Acrobat Reader and WinZip.

* The full greek version will be available very soon.