Space exploration, solar sail and solar electric propulsion are one of the most important goals for NASA. L.Garde Ultra-FAST boom will enhance the capability of NASA to accomplish these goals and many other missions related with large support structures. Typical applications for the proposed truss are to deploy and support solar-cell arrays, magnetometers, hydrophones, spectrometers, antennas, interferometers or gravity-gradient masses. Their lightweight, high performance and compact stowage volume provide the portability needed for those applications. Also, it is potentially a very useful component for remote manipulator system in space, or undersea. The proposed innovative technology represents a major improvement in deployable trusses for support structures used in military, terrestrial and space applications. For many military and commercial space missions, this innovation will minimize launch mass, volume and costs, while maintaining the required structural performance in the space environment. In addition, this technology will provide a reduction in installation and labor cost, not only for space systems, but for terrestrial deployable solar arrays that need to be portable. In addition, the Ultra-FAST boom is ideal for structural light-weighting applications such as lightweight deployable hierarchical structures, both for space and terrestrial environments.
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