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Thermal batteries originated during World War II when German scientist Georg Otto Erb developed the first practical cells using a salt mixture as an electrolyte. Erb developed batteries for military applications, including the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket, and artillery fuzing systems. None of these batteries entered field use during the war.
Batteries are used on spacecraft as a means of power storage. Primary batteries contain all their usable energy when assembled and can only be discharged. Secondary batteries can be recharged from some other energy source, such as solar panels or radioisotope-based power (), and can deliver power during periods when the space vehicle is out of direct sunlight.
An encapsulated thermal battery is physically similar to a phase change thermal battery in that it is a confined amount of physical material which is thermally heated or cooled to store or extract energy. However, in a non-phase change encapsulated thermal battery, the temperature of the substance is changed without inducing a phase change.
A pulsed plasma thruster (PPT), also known as a Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR), or as a plasma jet engine (PJE), is a form of electric spacecraft propulsion. [1] PPTs are generally considered the simplest form of electric spacecraft propulsion and were the first form of electric propulsion to be flown in space, having flown on two Soviet probes ...
Nuclear batteries can be classified by their means of energy conversion into two main groups: thermal converters and non-thermal converters. The thermal types convert some of the heat generated by the nuclear decay into electricity; an example is the radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), often used in spacecraft.
Diagram of a MMRTG. The multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) is a type of radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) developed for NASA space missions [1] such as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Energy's Office of Space and Defense Power Systems within the Office of Nuclear Energy.
Diagram of an RTG used on the Cassini probe. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG), sometimes referred to as a radioisotope power system (RPS), is a type of nuclear battery that uses an array of thermocouples to convert the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material into electricity by the Seebeck effect.
Some reserve batteries are: Aluminium battery, a variant of zinc-air battery where aluminium and air are used; Silver-zinc battery, often found in old missiles; Thermal battery, a class of battery types with molten salt as an electrolyte. The battery is in an inert state until the electrolyte melts through heating.