Digital Twinning for Onboard Health Monitoring of Solar Panels for Space Exploration Missions
Sachin SOLANKI, Francesco DI FIORE, Laura MAININI
Abstract. Spacecraft solar panels are among the most failure-prone subsystems, requiring onboard health monitoring to ensure reliable operation in harsh space environments. This work demonstrates and validates the FREEDOM digital twin for onboard near real-time health management of spacecraft solar arrays under limited computational resources. The twin is trained offline through a two-stage data-assimilation process, and operates online to predict degradation via inverse Bayesian optimization. Validation performed on a solar panel integrating AZUR SPACE 3C44 cells under incipient damages across a ten-year geostationary-orbit mission scenario yielded a mean damage-prediction error of 5.2 % with a computational time of 62 s.
Keywords
Spacecraft Health Monitoring, Solar Panels Incipient Damage Identification, Onboard Fault Diagnosis, Signals Compression, Bayesian Inference
Published online 7/20/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Sachin SOLANKI, Francesco DI FIORE, Laura MAININI, Digital Twinning for Onboard Health Monitoring of Solar Panels for Space Exploration Missions, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 69, pp 1524-1529, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904251-267
The article was published as article 267 of the book CEAS – AIDAA Conference 2025
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
References
[1] S.Y. Kim, J.F. Castet, J.H. Saleh, Spacecraft electrical power subsystem: failure behavior, reliability, and multi-state failure analyses, Reliability Engineering & System Safety. 98 (2012) 55-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2011.10.005
[2] M.R. Patel, O. Beik, Spacecraft Power Systems, second ed., CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003344605
[3] M. Hadrami, L. Roubi, M. Zazoui, J. Bourgoin, Relation between solar cell parameters and space degradation, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells. 90 (2006) 1486–1497. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2005.10.013
[4] R.S. Bokulic, C.C. DeBoy, Spacecraft Subsystems IV – Communications and Power, in: J.R. Wertz, D.F. Everett, J.J. Puschell (Eds.), Space Mission Engineering: The New SMAD, Microcosm Press, 2011, pp. 627-662.
[5] M.A. Carbone, K.A. Loparo, Fault Detection and Diagnosis in Spacecraft Electrical Power Systems, J. of Aerospace Information Systems. 20 (2023). https://doi.org/10.2514/1.I011136
[6] R. Fonod, C. Charbonnel, E. Bornschlegl, Position and Attitude Model-Based Thruster Fault Diagnosis: A Comparison Study, J. of Guidance, Control and Dynamics. 38 (2015) 1012-1026. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.G000309
[7] T.S. Abdel Aziz, G.I. Salama, M.S. Mohamed, S. Hussein, Spacecraft fault detection and identification techniques using artificial intelligence, J. of Physics: Conference Series. 2616 (2023) 012025, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/2616/1/012025
[8] R. Van Dinter, B. Tekinerdogan, C. Catal, Predictive maintenance using digital twins: A systematic literature review, Information and Software Technology. 151 (2022) 107008. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107008
[9] AIAA Digital Engineering Outreach and Integration Committee, Digital twin: Definition & value, AIAA and AIA Position Paper. (2022)
[10] F. Di Fiore, P.C. Berri, L. Mainini, FREEDOM: Validated Method for Rapid Assessment of Incipient Faults of Aerospace Systems, AIAA Journal. 62 (2024) 776–790. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.J062911
[11] P.I. Frazier, Bayesian Optimization, in: D. Shier (Ed.), Recent advances in optimization and modeling of contemporary problems, Informs, 2018, pp. 255–278. https://doi.org/10.1287/educ.2018.0188
[12] Information on https://azurspace.com/index.php/en/products/products-cpv
[13] SPENVIS. (v4.6.13), European Space Agency. (2025). https://www.spenvis.oma.be/
[14] J. Arnold, E.L. Christiansen, A. Davis, J. Hyde, D. Lear, J. Liou, F. Lyons, T. Prior, G. Studor, M. Ratliff, S. Ryan, F. Giovane, B. Corsaro, Handbook for Designing MMOD Protection, NASA, Johnson Space Center, 2009. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20090010053
[15] A. Sinha, J. Qian, S.L. Moffitt, K. Hurst, K. Terwilliger, D.C. Miller, L.T. Schelhas, P. Hacke, UV-induced degradation of high-efficiency silicon PV modules with different cell architectures, Progress in Photovoltaics. 31 (2023) 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1002/pip.3606
