Experimental Characterization of Power Dissipation of Battery Cells for Space Environment

An experimental campaign is presented aiming at the characterization of thermal dissipation of batteries to be used on board of small satellites.

A suitably designed device allows to manage automatically the orbital cycling simulation between battery cell charge and discharge. The cell thermal performance is characterized in various combinations of temperature, discharge current and Depth of Discharge.

The gathered data are used for providing guidelines in the design of a family of Italian Small Satellites.