SpiderFab: Architecture for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures

Although SpiderFab is reminiscent of a creepy Halloween spider, this space technology could radically change the way we build and deploy spacecraft.

The SpiderFab process for on-orbit construction of large, lightweight structures could dramatically reduce the launch mass and stowed volume of NASA systems for astronomy, Earth-observation, and other missions requiring large apertures or large baselines, enabling them to be deployed using much smaller, less expensive launch vehicles and thereby reducing total life cycle cost for these missions.

This Phase II NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)-funded research is developing and demonstrating methods to address the key risk of fabrication in the thermal and vacuum environment of space.

Currently, satellites are built and tested on the ground, and then launched into space aboard rockets.

As a result, a large fraction of the engineering cost and launch mass of space systems is required exclusively to ensure the system survives the launch environment.

This is particularly true for systems with physically large components, such as antennas, booms, and panels, which must be designed to stow for launch and then deploy reliably on orbit.

Furthermore, the performance of these systems are largely determined by the sizes of their apertures, solar panels, and other key components, and the sizes of these structures are limited by the requirement to stow them within available launch shrouds.

Current State-Of-the-Art (SOA) deployable technologiess enable apertures, baselines, and arrays of up to several dozen meters to be stowed within existing launch shrouds.

However, the cost deployables increases quickly with increased size, driven by the complexity of the mechanisms required to enable them to fold up within the available volume as well as the testing necessary to ensure they deploy reliably on orbit.

As a result, aperture sizes significantly beyond 100 meters are not feasible or affordable with current technologies.

NIAC: Fleets of 'Flat Landers' Could Explore Other Planets

Future space missions may send dozens of rug-like robots fluttering down to the surface of alien worlds, taking much of the risk out of planetary exploration. 

Credit: Hamid Hemmati

Future space missions may send dozens of rug-like robots fluttering down to the surface of alien worlds, taking much of the risk out of planetary exploration.

Researchers are developing flat, blanket-size landers that could be delivered en masse to worlds such as Mars or the Jupiter moon Europa.

The approach represents a radical departure from the surface-exploration status quo, which generally launches single-shot, big-ticket landers or rovers that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to design and build.

The two-dimensional lander idea "gives you the capability to stack them up and distribute them over a wide range of areas rather than just be able to land in only one place, and have one shot at landing," Hamid Hemmati, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said last month at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium at Stanford University.

"We think it will enable NASA to go places that that they don't dare to go right now."

A new type of exploration
Hemmati and his team got a $100,000 grant from NIAC last year to develop the "flat lander" concept.

The current vision calls for dozens of sensor-loaded sheets, each about 3 feet long by 3 feet wide (1 meter by 1 meter), but less than 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) thick, to be toted to another planet or moon by a mother ship.

Mason Peck, Cornell University, In-Orbit Assembly of Modular Space Systems with Non-Contacting, Flux-Pinned Interfaces.

Each sheet would touch down at a different location, without the need for complicated and expensive landing systems such as the "sky crane" that dropped NASA's Curiosity rover onto the surface of Mars in August 2012, researchers say.

Nestor Voronka, Tethers Unlimited, Inc., An Architecture of Modular Spacecraft with Integrated Structural Electrodynamic Propulsion (ISEP)

"These landers should be capable of passive landings, avoiding the costly, complex use of rockets, radar and associated structure and control systems," Hemmati and his colleagues write in a description of the project on the NIAC website.

The loss of a few landers on any particular mission would not be a big deal anyway, Hemmati said.

"They don't all have to survive; we have dozens of them," he said. "Even if half of them make it, it's still good. We'll be happy."

NASA Funds 12 Far-Out Space Tech Ideas

Future starships may be constructed in Earth orbit using a ring-type construction facility, which could have hotel rooms where guests could observe the construction.

NASA has granted funding to a dozen imaginative tech concepts, in the hopes that one or more of them will lead to big breakthroughs in space science and exploration.

The 12 ideas, which were selected under Phase 1 of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, are ambitious and varied.

One aims to build biomaterials such as human tissue with a 3D printer, for example, while another proposes to induce deep-sleep torpor states in astronauts making the long journey to Mars.

"These new Phase 1 selections include potential breakthroughs for Earth and space science, diverse operations and the potential for new paths that expand human civilization and commerce into space," NIAC program executive Jay Falker said in a statement.

Phase 1 awards are worth about $100,000. The selected mission teams will use the money to conduct nine-month initial analysis studies, after which they can apply for Phase 2 funding of approximately $500,000 for two more years of concept development.

The 12 selected concepts, along with their principal investigators, are:

• Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF) Propulsion System (Rob Adams, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center)
• Torpor-Inducing Transfer Habitat For Human Stasis To Mars (John Bradford, Spaceworks Engineering, Inc.)
• Two-Dimensional Planetary Surface Landers (Hamid Hemmati, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
• Dual-mode Propulsion System Enabling CubeSat Exploration of the Solar System (Nathan Jerred, Universities Space Research Association)
• Growth Adapted Tensegrity Structures: A New Calculus for the Space Economy (Anthony Longman)
• Eternal Flight as the Solution for 'X' (Mark Moore, NASA Langley Research Center)
• Deep Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies with Galactic Cosmic Ray Secondary Particle Showers (Thomas Prettyman, Planetary Science Institute)
• Biomaterials Out of Thin Air: In Situ, On-Demand Printing of Advanced Biocomposites (Lynn Rothschild, NASA Ames Research Center)
• Plasmonic Force Propulsion Revolutionizes Nano/PicoSatellite Capability (Joshua Rovey, University of Missouri, Rolla)
• Transformers For Extreme Environments (Adrian Stoica, Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
• 10-Meter Sub-Orbital Large Balloon Reflector (Christopher Walker, University of Arizona)
• Low-Mass Planar Photonic Imaging Sensor (Ben Yoo, University of California, Davis)

The NIAC program has been operating in its present form since 2011. The original NIAC, called the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, ran from 1998 through 2007.

NB: In 2008, Congress ordered the U.S. National Research Council to investigate NIAC's effectiveness and importance. The reviews were favorable, leading to the program's resurrection several years later.

To learn more about the 2013 Phase 1 selections, go to the NIAC page