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The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Northrop Grumman's Space Solar Incremental Research and Demonstration Project (SSPIDR) announced they are one step closer to collecting solar energy in space and transmitting it to Earth using radio frequency. (RF). The team has successfully performed the first end-to-end demonstration of key hardware for the Arachne flight experiment.
A ground demonstration of novel “sandwich tile” components was used to successfully convert solar energy to radio frequency (RF), a critical step needed to pave the way for a large-scale solar energy harvesting system in space. . For this to work, receiving antennas on Earth need to be used to convert the RF energy into usable energy.
Space solar power is a key focus of AFRL, which awarded Northrop Grumman a $ million contract in for the development of a payload to demonstrate key components of a prototype space solar power sy Caseno Email List stem. The sandwich tile is currently in development as an essential payload component for Arachne and as a building block for a large-scale operating system.
The sandwich tile is composed of two layers: the first layer is a panel of high-efficiency photovoltaic (PV) cells that collect solar energy and provide power to the second layer. The second layer is filled with components that enable the conversion and beamforming of solar energy to RF.
“The successful conversion of sunlight to RF energy in a lightweight, scalable architecture is a significant step forward in delivering the building blocks of the technology to achieve the Arachne mission,” said Jay Patel, business unit vice president. of Northrop Grumman remote sensing programs. "We are helping to deliver a pioneering capability that can provide a strategic advantage to our forces around the world."
The ground demonstration used a solar simulator to illuminate the photovoltaic side of the tile and begin the solar-to-RF conversion process. The successful testing of the single tile for the Arachne payload provides a building block for a one-meter-square tile panel, a threshold that has not yet been met by any other solar-to- RF experiments . Arachne is expected to launch in
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