Emcore, a provider of fibre-optic technology and high-efficiency solar photovoltaic satellite systems has been awarded a contract to supply solar panels to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre for its 2014 Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS).
The contract is a real coup for Emcore and worth more than $10 million. The company will supply 32 of its highest-efficiency ZTJ solar panels, which have a sunlight-to-electricity conversion rate nearing 30 percent. They ZTJs are among the highest performing “space qualified” solar cells on the market today.
According to Christopher Larocca, Chief Operating Officer of Emcore, the company is well placed to dominate the solar space race.
“This NASA contract is a significant award for Emcore,” he said. “Under a previous contract, we successfully delivered solar panels for NASA GSFC’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, which is currently powering the spacecraft orbiting the Moon. Winning this new contract accelerates Emcore’s efforts to be the premier supplier of solar panels for demanding spacecraft power systems.”
The mission that will utilise Emcore’s super solar cells launches in October, 2014. Four small spin-stabilised satellite/laboratories will be sent into the Earth’s magnetosphere – a distance of roughly 70,000 km on the side facing the Sun – on an expendable rocket. There they will remain for two and a half years, gathering data.
NASA physicists hope to learn more about how the magnetosphere – responsible among other things for the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, seen when charged particles from space run into the Earth’s magnetic field – converts magnetic energy into heat through a process call magnetic reconnection.
