Mary-Louise Hoffman
Redwire has built and supplied a pair of roll-out solar arrays to Boeing for installation on the International Space Station as part of a NASA initiative to modernize the orbiting laboratory's power system.
Boeing, the prime contractor for NASA ISS operations, received two of the six iROSAs after the hardware completed the acceptance testing phase, Redwire said Thursday.
NASA previously said it would combine the lightweight arrays with eight larger power channels of the outpost in a move to increase power capacity there by at least 20 percent and the agency expects the newer set to generate more than 120 kilowatts of electricity at orbital daytime.
Deployable Space Systems, which Redwire acquired in February, manufactured the structure with solar cells from Boeing's Spectrolab subsidiary.
John Mulholland, vice president and ISS program manager at Boeing, said adding the solar arrays to the space station will support deep space exploration technology and life sciences research work onboard the laboratory.
Redwire is also developing versions of the ROSA for other NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test and the lunar Gateway missions.
