Volume 4, Number 2 May/June 1996
A large antenna that inflates like a balloon will be carried aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor STS-77 mission on May 16 and released into Earth orbit for the first time. This experiment may lay the groundwork for future inflatable space structures such as telescopes and satellite antennas.
The Inflatable Antenna Experiment (IAE) was developed by L'Garde, Inc. of Tustin, Calif., a small aerospace business, in a contract with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory under NASA's In-Space Technology Experiments Program (IN-STEP), said Dr. Steven Bard, the Project Manager at JPL. The antenna will be flown on the Goddard Space Flight Center's Spartan spacecraft as Spartan Mission 207. The Mission Manager at Goddard is Mark Steiner.
Inflatable structures have the potential to offer many advantages over hard structures. Because of the smaller mass and stowed (uninflated) volume, mission costs could be significantly reduced (10 to 100 times less expensive). In addition, deployment systems may be more reliable with inflatable components and these structures can be launched using a single small vehicle.
"Space antennas, many times larger than today's, have a variety of applications in space, such as satellite antennas for deep space missions and mobile communications, Earth observations, active microwave testing, astronomical observing and space-based radar," Bard says.
The IAE will be deployed after the Spartan spacecraft is released from the Shuttle. The struts of the IAE will be attached to the Spartan. Once in low-Earth orbit, the Spartan will become a platform for the antenna which, when inflated, will be roughly the size of a tennis court. The IAE struts will first be inflated, followed by the reflector canopy. The antenna aperture area is about 100 times larger than its area when stowed.
A high-resolution video photography will record measurements of the shape and smoothness of the reflector surface over a single orbit. The antenna will then be jettisoned from the Spartan spacecraft where it will disintegrate as it drops through the Earth's atmosphere. The Spartan, containing the test data, will be grappled by the Shuttle's robotic arm and retrieved.
It is estimated that an operational version of this antenna can be developed for less than $10 million, a substantial savings over current hard structures that may cost as much as $200 million to develop and deliver to space.
L'Garde's Gordon Veal, the IAE Principal Investigator, hopes that a successful experiment will lead to an operational deployment before the end of the decade. If successful, the commercial potential for L'Garde's technology is considerable; applications range from communications satellite antennas to large Earth-imaging spacecraft and may enable missions that require larger structures than are currently able to be launched into orbit.
This IN-STEP program was funded by NASA's Office of Space Access and Technology. The Spartan spacecraft was developed separately and sponsored by the Office of Space Science.
For more information, contact Dr. Steven Bard at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Inflatable Antenna Experiment (IAE) Project Manager. Phone: 818/354-4487, E-mail: steven.bard@jpl.nasa.gov Please mention that you read about it in Innovation.
