BMDO/02-214B Electronic Devices - Foldable Integrated Thin-film Stiffening (FITS) for Spacecraft Electronic Solar Array Power Components

"The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has future missions that require space-based surveillance and interceptor platforms to support the National Missile Defense effort. Rapid, affordable deployment and validation of these platforms is a necessary step towardoperational architectures. However this will require lightweight, low-cost solutions to providing power generation and storage on-board these satellites. Ever-increasing power needs for the surveillance and tracking sensors proposed for space-basedmissile defense platforms are driving the solar energy collection systems to sizes that require large and expensive launch vehicles. Mass and cost reductions are needed to meet these demanding requirements of spacecraft electronic power components.Unfortunately, the state of the art (SOA) rigid space solar cell technology has reached its limitations in system cost & specific power:¿ Cheapest "off the shelf" cost = $1000/watt¿ Highest beginning of life specific power = 106 watt/kg.MSI's foldable, integrated, thin-film stiffened (FITS) array for flexible thin-film or crystalline photovoltaics provides the solution to achieving lower cost (less than $200/Watt) and higher specific power (greater than 300Watt/Kg) for space solar arrays.FITS technology advances the capability beyond SOA for traditional spacecraft electronic power components and enables the use of thin-film photovoltaics (PV) for space by using an innovative, lightweight, integrated and passively deployed stiffeningsystem. Advancing the capability of electronic power components for spacecraft power solar arrays by increasing the specific power in Watt/kg, of solar array systems for space, and decreasing the cost in $/Watt. MSI has performed a study to understand thefeasibility of using thin film PV and the FITS design for arrays up to 15Kwatts while maintaining spacecraft controllability. Array configurations were studied in the 1Kwatt, 6Kwatt, and 15Kwatt sizes on spacecraft buses with mass properties consistentwith those powers. All arrays proved feasible and are estimate