The flexible solar panel wings are successfully applied to the core module. The unfolded area of the two wings of the core module solar wing exceeds 134 square meters. After being fully folded, it is only one book thick, which is 1/15th of the traditional rigid solar panel wing.
The application of the flexible solar cells marks a jump forward in China's solar array technology, and it will ensure the stable, long-term operations of the country's space station, the agency said.
The flexible solar array technology is the third generation technology which has been used on all the modules of the space station. The estimated electricity consumption for three taikonauts living and working in the space station for one day is roughly 320 kilowatt.
During the launch, the flexible solar wings were first folded tightly like a closed accordion. Each panel is less than one millimeter thick, thus reducing the volume of the folded arrays to just 20 percent of the volume of traditional solar panels.
It developed its first generation rigid solar array technology for the Shenzhou manned spaceship project. Then the second generation of semi-rigid solar array technology was adopted for the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft. The flexible solar array technology is the third generation technology which has been used on all the modules of the space station.
The flexible solar wings are used for lighter weight and higher power compared to traditional rigid solar wings. It is not the first time that China has adopted flexible solar wings as an energy source for a spacecraft. In fact, the flexible solar wings were first used on the core module Tianhe with each wing measuring 67 square meters.