Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has awarded a contract to Ascent Solar Technologies for the supply of customised solar photovoltaic (PV) solutions for a new solar sail deployment demonstration project.

As part of the deal, Ascent has already supplied small area test cells, as well as large 19.5cm x 30cm monolithically-integrated modules.

Both the modules are placed on a very thin 25mic plastic substrate, which is half the thickness of Ascent’s production substrate for standard product.

“JAXA’s Jovian mission is a testament to the advancements being made in orbit, both in terms of its objectives, as well as the extremes in which the vehicle is required to operate.”

The 19.5cm x 30cm module has been tailor-made to match the expected deployment mechanism and PV layout for the final Jovian spacecraft, for which JAXA will provide the Jupiter Magnetospheric Orbiter (JMO) for conducting in-situ exploration of different regions of the magnetosphere and the remote sensing of the plasma torus from high latitudes of Jupiter, among others.

Ascent Solar Technologies founding member and chief technology officer Dr Joseph Armstrong said: “JAXA’s Jovian mission is a testament to the advancements being made in orbit, both in terms of its objectives, as well as the extremes in which the vehicle is required to operate.

“Our experience in fulfilling the latest order requires key process modifications that were necessary to provide those thinner modules in a production environment, and we are pleased to be able to successfully translate that into production.

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“It is JAXA’s intent to use the 19.5cm x 30cm modules in a deployment demonstration based on the agency’s previous Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun (IKAROS) project that was demonstrated in orbit in 2010.”

Ascent previously tested its monolithically integrated copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar module against extreme environments that are expected to prevail in deep space.