AFRL receives top technology transfer award

  • Published
  • By Alarie Ray-Garcia
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  An Air Force Research Laboratory technology, and the scientists and engineers who developed it, are being honored with one of the nation's top technology transfer awards.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer selected AFRL to receive a 2016 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award for the Roll-Out Solar Array, or ROSA, a technology which revolutionizes how satellites are powered.

For the past four decades, satellites have relied on their power from rigid, heavy solar arrays that require cumbersome mechanics for deployment once in space. ROSA is a lighter-weight, flexible array that stows compactly and unfurls in space using a rollable high-strain composite tube.

By eliminating the need for the complex, expensive and heavy components used on traditional panels, ROSA makes satellites much more cost efficient. ROSA can also provide significantly more power than traditional panels because it can easily be scaled larger for more capacity.

It is estimated ROSA's technology advancements could save the U.S. Air Force's communication and navigation programs $1.4 billion.  It is being embraced by both government and commercial customers.

"ROSA is a wonderful example of revolutionary in-house AFRL research being linked to the energetic, product-focused nature of small business to produce a remarkable cost savings for our nation's space assets," said Jeremy Banik, ROSA's principle investigator.

AFRL was selected for the FLC award for its outstanding work in transferring the ROSA technology into the private sector for commercial applications. Two companies, Deployable Space Systems Inc. located in Goleta, California, and LoadPath, LLC, located in Albuquerque, worked with AFRL to advance the technology and get it into the market.

Since then, several Department of Defense prime contractors have evaluated ROSA for various missions, including Space Systems Loral, which is currently qualifying ROSA for use on future communication satellites. By 2017, DSS will offer ROSA as a commercial product available to all satellite builders.

The ROSA team will be honored at an award ceremony April 27 at the FLC National Meeting in Chicago. They include Banik, 1st Lt. Nathan Gapp, David Chapman, Joy Stein, Bernard Carpenter and Paul Hausgen.