Atlantis Carries EaglePicher Cells to Space Station

The Space Shuttle Atlantis carried EaglePicher battery cells to a recent rendezvous with the International Space Station. During the mission, Atlantis Commander Brent Jeff and his five crewmates delivered and fitted the P3/P4 truss, a 17-ton segment of the station’s “backbone” that includes a huge set of solar arrays, new batteries and a giant rotary joint to allow the arrays to track the Sun. The solar arrays, spanning over 240 feet when fully extended, gathered the Sun’s energy and stored it in the EaglePicher battery cells for use when the station was blocked from the Sun by the Earth.

The NiH batteries are part of a package that includes two sequential shunt units, six battery charge and discharge units and 12 battery orbital replacement units. The battery cells double the station’s ability to power itself during solar eclipse. The power is needed for science laboratories, living chamber and other systems onboard the station.

“This is the second of what will eventually be four power module assemblies for the Space Station,” says Darrell Ideker, EaglePicher’s director of space products. “In this payload, there were 12 batteries each containing 76 EaglePicher cells for a total of 912 cells.”