Enhanced Mission-Enabling Ultra-High Power Solar Array (Mega-ROSA EX)

Mega-ROSA-EX is an enhanced, higher stiffness, higher sun-pointing accuracy, higher strength, higher specific power and even larger overall power / deployed size / stowed packaging capability configuration of the innovative Mega-ROSA technology. Mega-ROSA, named for Mega Roll-Out Solar Array, is a highly-modularized and extremely-scalable ROSA-based solar array architecture that provides immense power level range capability from 100kW to multiple Megawatts in size, for NASA Exploration Initiative and Planetary missions such as SEP space-tug and large-scale SEP-powered Planetary applications.The further-advanced/optimized versions of Mega-ROSA proposed(Mega-ROSA EX),promise to increase its deployed stiffness, strength and deployed size/packaging capability performance well beyond the excellent values already shown to be obtainable with the baseline "standard" high-packaging efficiency Mega-ROSA design. The significant and revolutionary end-user benefits of the Mega-ROSA EX technology advances are:Increased deployed stiffness / sun-pointing accuracy - The Mega-ROSA-EX configurations proposed to be developed during the Phase 1 program will allow significantly higher deployed stiffness (3-5 times higher than the standard baseline Mega-ROSA configurations), and the resulting lower PV blanket-plane displacements / higher wing sun-pointing accuracy achieved under expected on-orbit accelerations will enable the use of currently-available and cost-lowering flex-blanket PV concentration systems. The use of these concentrating methods to reduce the amount of expensive high-performance photovoltaics is a necessity to make cost-viable many of the planned NASA high-power SEP and Planetary missions.Certain SEP-powered Tug and Planetary spacecraft applications have mission scenarios with burn events/maneuvers that impose high accelerations. The Mega-ROSA EX configurations proposed are capable of achieving these accels. up to 0.25 G's and higher.