In preparation for the ESA Huygens Probe mission todescend through Titan’s atmosphere on 14 January2005 following a 7 years cruise phase while attached toNASA/JPL Cassini Orbiter, important Probe powersystem verification steps had to be passed beforedeciding on the final mission sequence scenario:1- The Huygens Probe, equipped with 5 primaryBatteries, had to demonstrate its capability to performadequate Battery depassivation as nominally foreseenbut also under load failure conditions with less powerto depassivate the electrodes.2- A more accurate estimate of the on-board electricalenergy available to support the mission had to be madein order to decide upon an anticipated switch-on of theProbe systems before its entry into Titan’s atmosphere.Such verification activities were carried out using theHuygens Probe Engineering Model (EM) available atthe European Space Operation Centre (ESOC) inDarmstadt, and using Flight Spare Batteriesmanufactured at the same time as the Flight Modelsand stored at the ESTEC Battery Test Center underambient temperature conditions.Following Battery depassivation tests and Batterydischarge tests, the development of a numericalsimulator allowed refining the Probe energy budgetsaccounting for different failure modes.
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