• International Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-9
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• 2022

The NEA release mechanism is used to provide restraint and release functions with low shock for critical deployment operations on solar arrays after launch. The GK3 solar array consists of 2 wings and 6 hold down points per panel. The NEA SSD9103S1 is a part of the GK3 solar array hold-down and release mechanism. Each NEA unit is equipped with two Z-diodes which provide power to a NEA unit connected in series after actuation of the fuse wire. This paper presents the hot firing test results of a quadrature NEA SSD9103S1 configuration. One output powers a maximum of 4 NEA SSD9103S1 units simultaneously. The necessary actuation pulse duration has been determined to meet margin requirement for thermal energy of minimum 4. Actuation thermal energy difference is about 6.6% between each half of two fired serial NEAs. Thermal energy margin at worst case is minimum 5.9 in case of an actuation pulse duration of 500 ms. Two series Zener impedance depend on current applied has been characterized by an additional actuation after all fuse wires are open circuit. Total number of actuation commands to the GK3 NEA unit reduce drastically from 24 in case of single NEA configuration down to 8 in case of parallel and quadrature NEA configurations. It can be accommodated by the existing HP2U Pyro design without any impact.