THE SCARLET'" ARRAY FOR HIGH POWER GEO SATELLITES

The GEO satellite market is demanding increasingly capable spacecraft which, in turn, drives commercial spacecraft manufacturers to require significantly higher power solar arrays. As satellite capability increases the demand for high power array systems which are both cost and performance competitive becomes more crucial. Conventional rigid panel planar arrays, although suitable in the past, negatively impact spacecraft competitiveness for these new applications. The Solar - Array with Refractive Linear Element Iechnology (SCARLEP) represents an economically attractive solution for meeting these new high power requirements. When compared to conventional planar arrays, Scarletm provides substantially lower cost and higher deployed stiffness, competitive mass, better producability, and affordable use of high efficiency multijunction cells. This paper compares costfperformance characteristics of the Scarletb" array to conventional planar arrays for high power GEO spacecraft applications. High power Scarletm array configurations are described, and inherent spacecraft and array level costlperformance benefits are presented. cost, mass, and deployed stiffness. It will be shown that Scarlet represents a low-risk, high-payoff, solution for high power GEO applications when compared to conventional rigid panel array systems.