CubeSat Battery

The AAC Clyde Space OPTIMUS range of CubeSat batteries are amongst the most flown spacecraft battery in history. With thousands of units shipped to missions across the globe, and hundreds of units on orbit, our battery offers unrivalled on-orbit heritage. Our batteries also come with built in features such as thermostatically controlled heaters and sensors.

The combination of using strings of cells connected in parallel, with cell protection electronics, means that our CubeSat batteries are robust, resilient and offer inherent redundancy. In addition, the use of protected parallel strings allows us to easily and safely scale the battery to meet different mission requirements.

Our Optimus Batteries are optimised for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions with a maximum altitude of 850km. They are compatible with a wide variety of launch platforms, including manned missions, when integrated into suitable platforms. If you are intending to launch your CubeSat from a manned flight platform we can perform additional qualification and acceptance testing in order to meet the necessary safety conditions.

The battery systems all have autonomous integrated heater systems to enhance operation at low temperatures. Each system has multiple protection systems in place at a cell, battery, and system-level which will automatically respond to external fault conditions in order to protect the battery and wider system from irrecoverable damage. The OPTIMUS Battery range is compatible with International Space Station deployment safety requirements and can be compatible with a wide variety of launch platforms, including manned missions, when integrated into suitable platforms.

Utilized over a large number of missions; especially US CubeSat missions, these New Space solutions have an excellent track record spanning almost two decades as one of the most flown and reliable spacecraft batteries. In order to ensure consistent quality levels the batteries undergo rigorous testing, including tests performed by ESA and NASA.

Unlike many in the industry, we purchase our battery cells in large batches and then subject the cells to extensive LOT acceptance testing. During this process we also qualify a large portion of the cells to the NASA ISS requirements. The high quality of the cell and battery builds make them perfect for the use the challenging environment of space.

Spacecraft developers can’t take chances with battery selection as it is so critical to the success of the mission. Having already demonstrated excellent performance on orbit on over 100 missions over the last 10 or more years, our battery ticks all the right boxes.

Power

The highly scalable OPTIMUS battery range is available in 30Wh, 40Wh, and 80Wh capacity, with larger capacity available on request. Our inbuilt protections such as under-voltage protection, over-voltage protection and string over-current protection are based on over a decade of design heritage, guaranteeing power efficiency and consistency.

Performance

Battery selection is critical to the success of the mission. Having already demonstrated excellent performance in-obit on over 100 missions spanning almost two decades, our battery range ticks all the right boxes.

Reliability

Qualified to NASA standards EP-Wi-032. Additional qualification and acceptance testing can be provided for manned flight in order to meet the necessary safety conditions.

The batteries are designed for integration with spacecraft that have an EPS compatible with lithium ion polymer technology and can easily be combined with the STARBUCK EPS range.