Supporting NASA's materials and structures capabilities, specifically at NASA Langley, this project's technologies directly address requirements for lightweight deployable solar sail booms for cubesats. The proposed technologies offer deployable booms at a fraction of the weight, with reduced deployment power. Through this project, tailoring EASMP for space applications opens a new frontier for novel material applications for various space systems such as, but not limited to; deployable solar arrays, deployable antennas, micro-actuators, variable vibration dampening structures, and tunable signal cancellation panels. Other NASA applications may benefit from the material?s ability to stay flexible and soft below -100?C, such as seals, couplings, or dampers.
This project's technologies, developed for NASA systems, would directly apply to systems operated by other government and commercial enterprises. Government systems that would derive the same benefits would include deployable composites for satellites operated by the Department of Defense, Department of Interior?s EROS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Federal Aviation Administration. This technology's attributes for tunable composite modulus should yield a high potential for private sector commercialization for various space materials and systems for companies such as Boeing, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and many more.
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