One SwRI R&D 100 winner turns buckled fiberglass into a spacecraft truss. The other models freight rail with 900 hours of BNSF field data

Solar arrays have been standard spacecraft hardware for decades, but their tendency to flex can complicate maneuvers needing precision such as docking. To tame the wobble, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) developed PaSTA, a technology that can bring rigidity to deployable structures on spacecraft, thus enabling autonomous spacecraft docking operations. PaSTA also happens to be one… The post One SwRI R&D 100 winner turns buckled fiberglass into a spacecraft truss. The other models freight rail with 900 hours of BNSF field data appeared first on Research & Development World .