Deployable Structures
ATK Goleta
is the satellite industry's premier source for
mission-enabling, space-qualified deployable booms, masts, and backing
structures for commercial, military, civil, and scientific space
programs.
ATK has consistently met the challenge to develop
deployable solutions for a broad range of large space structures
applications, from global mapping and communication antennas and space
telescopes, to high-sensitivity instrumentation such as particle
detectors and magnetometers. ATK’s decades of experience with all types
of deployable spaceflight structures allow us to quickly devise and
deliver an optimal, lowest-risk solution.
ATK delivers systems that deploy linear panel arrays, membrane surfaces,
and discrete elements to stringent accuracies with excellent stability.
Below is a sampling of the many types of systems we have designed, built
and tested, and which have all flown with 100% on-orbit success. Contact
us and we will discuss with you the best approach to realize an
affordable, reliable, high-performance solution.
Coilable Booms
40+ years after its original invention, the
Coilable boom is still unsurpassed for overall performance. The
Coilable’s winning combination of compact stowage, low mass,
self-deploy-ability (and therefore minimal non-structural mass
overhead), scalability, placement accuracy and thermal stability make it
the preeminent choice for a huge range of in-space deployment
applications. ATK is constantly refining this foundational technology to
serve new applications, for example, recently delivering a 4-sided,
constructionally-twisted variant to form a helical quadrifilar antenna
with the boom’s longerons themselves. Ultra-lightweight carbon fiber
versions are enabling a variety of applications, ranging from large
membrane deployment (e.g. solar sails and sunshades) to long-baseline
(>80 m) dipole antennas.
The versatility of the Coilable boom also extends to the most demanding
space application: support of optics for space telescopes. ATK is a
partner with the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center to produce a unique,
4-sided Graphite Coilable boom to deploy and support the optical bench
for the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX (GEMS) mission.
Telescoping Boom
ATK’s
telescoping booms provide the highest push and pull force (100’s of lbs) of
all our linearly deploying structures by means of an internal motor-driven
lead screw. The smooth outer surface and internalized mechanism provide
robust protection from environmental hazards, including proven operation by
astronauts during EVA on the Space Shuttle and the International Space
Station (ISS). These booms are built for ultra-high cycle life (10,000
deploy/retract) and reliability. Latching joints between each segment
provide a stiff, precise, preloaded system once deployed. Designs can be
optimized for mass, strength, and/or placement precision.
ADAM Articulating Mast
ATK’s articulated mast systems are designed and
manufactured for the deployment of a variety of critical spacecraft
payloads, such as baseline extension for radar antennas or long focal
length optical systems.
First installed on the International Space Station
in 2000, ATK's Folding Articulated Square Truss (FAST) Mast technology
allowed for a compact stowage length (less than eight feet when fully
retracted) and more than 115 feet when fully deployed. The FAST Mast
canister is designed and qualified to fully retract and deploy the space
station solar arrays 35 times during over the on-orbit life.
An evolution of the FAST Mast is the ADAM mast
which has been employed to meet the most aggressive stiffness, strength,
and stability requirements for linear deployments. Notable applications
include the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and the NuSTAR X-ray
imager.
SRTM accumulated a vast trove of global topographic
data which is now available to every smartphone user. Over the course of
an 11-day Shuttle mission, over 80% of Earth’s topography was mapped, to
30‑m pixel resolution, with SAR panels separated 60-m by the articulated
mast provided by ATK.
For NuSTAR, ATK designed and built an ADAM mast system, as well as the
extremely thermally stable optical bench and tip adjustment mechanism,
used to support the X-ray telescope’s 10-m focal length. NuSTAR will be
the first focusing high-energy X-ray mission, opening the hard X-ray sky
to the search for black holes, mapping supernova explosions, and
studying the most extreme active galaxies.
Articulating Backing Truss Structures
(Extendible
Support Structures)
In some cases, the stiff and stable deployment of large
sensors is best accomplished with a purpose-built folding truss, and ATK is
a world leader in producing such systems. For example, ATK was selected by
Ball Aerospace to design and build the Reflector Deployment Assembly (RDA)
for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI). The
RDA is a folding, statically determinate hexapod truss used to support a
1.2-m-diameter reflector dish. Our RDA structure exceeded the stringent
requirements for placement repeatability (less than 0.001 inches, 3-sigma,
over 10 deployments) and thermal stability (less than 0.01 inches and 18 arcsec each axis over each orbit). Deployment is powered and controlled by a
robust spring/damper drive unit that, once deployed, does not apply loading
to the structure to ensure that the final reflector position is driven
entirely by the precision of the folding struts.
ATK also produced the Extendible Support Structure (ESS) for the
RADARSAT-2 mission for MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) and the
Canadian Space Agency, which is currently in service in a wide variety
of roles, including sea ice identification and ship routing, iceberg
detection, agricultural crop monitoring, marine surveillance for ship
and pollution detection, terrestrial defense surveillance and target
identification, and surface mapping.
Contact:
ATK-Goleta
600 Pine Ave.
Goleta, CA 93117
Phone: 805.685.2262
Fax: 805.685.1369
|
