Study of the Effect of Light Incidence Angle and Dust Particles on the Lunar Dust Detector of Solar Cells

The short-circuit current of the solar cell lunar dust detector is used as a reference to study its response to light incidence angle, dust deposition mass and particle size distribution through simulation experiments using simulated lunar dust. The results showed that the short-circuit current of the dust detector cannot be well approximated by the cosine function once the light incidence angle is greater than 60°, especially in the case of dust deposition. The short-circuit current of the detector and the lunar dust deposition mass follow an exponential relationship. Under the same deposition mass, the smaller the particle size of lunar dust, the stronger the shielding effect on solar cells. This is due to the smaller gaps between the small-sized lunar dust particles, resulting in more loss of light intensity. In addition, the mass extinction coefficient is highly dependent upon the light incidence angle. Therefore, in the actual testing process, the mass extinction coefficient should be selected based on the incidence angle to ensure the accuracy of the results given by the detector.