As with NASA satellites, virtually every spacecraft deploys some form of structure to gather power, communicate, collect data, radiate heat, or protect itself or its instruments. By eliminating the cost and weight of motors and providing an efficient structure, the HOODS architecture could provide many commercial and government spacecraft with significant cost and mass reduction.
The innovation is focused primarily on the critical needs of NASA's Advanced Technology Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST). The approach could be applied to either the 9.2m or 16.8m telescope as well as any derivative configuration. Depending on the approaches taken by NASA, the proposed system could be applied to the Terrestrial Planet Finder and the Terrestrial Planet Imager missions. The underlying hierarchical architecture could be applied to a wide range of NASA science missions, providing large deployable instrument structures and instrument protection at a light weight and for a low cost. Almost every NASA mission deploys at least solar arrays, often antennas, and frequently science instruments. The lightweight self-deploying HOODS architecture could be applied to almost any deployable structure.
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