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Great info, much appreciated. Still seems like kind of a lot of something that's supposed to live in space for years at a time.

Presumably solar panels recharge a battery when it can, but continuous operations seem out of the question without some pretty large panels.

Maybe I'm underestimating modern solar panels or something.

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Efficiency of solar panels on satellites is about 40%. That means ~ 700W/m2 if correctly oriented. That's quite a lot of power, even if you stay 50% of the time in night while orbiting Earth. So no need for huge panels usually. (Updated : more like 40%, not 50%)

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