Engineering Development Model Testing of the PowerSphere

The Aerospace Corporation, NASA Glenn Research Center, Lockheed-Martin, and ILC Dover over the past two years have been engaged in developing a Multifunctional Inflatable Structure for the PowerSphere Concept under contract with NASA (NAS3-01115). The PowerSphere concept consists of a relatively large spherical solar array, which would be deployed from a micro satellite. 1–8 The PowerSphere structure and the deployment method was patented by the Aerospace Corporation (U.S. Patent Numbers 6,284,966 B1 and 6,318,675). The work on this project has resulted in a number of technological innovations in the state of the art for integrating flexible thin-film solar cells with flex circuit harness technology and inflatable ultraviolet-light-rigidizable structures.