A Nickel Hydrogen Common Pressure Vessel Battery Spaceflight Experiment

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI) have joined together in a cooperative research and development effort to “space qualify” the JCI Common Pressure Vessel (CPV) Nickel Hydrogen (NiH₂) battery. JCI is providing two (2) NiH₂ batteries to NRL. One is for qualification tests and the second is for the flight experiment. NRL is responsible for the design, test and integration of the battery with an existing spacecraft electrical power system, launch of the battery with the host spacecraft, and providing data from the flight experiment. Since the intent of the experiment is to “space qualify” the JCI NiH2 CPV design, the battery will be “on-line” and fully charged during the launch of the host spacecraft. This paper will describe the NRL-JCI Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, the NiH2 CPV battery experiment design, and the qualification test program.