Airbus has been chosen by MDA Space to supply solar arrays for the MDA Aurora satellite product line, designed to extend global communication networks through satellite constellations. Airbus will deliver over 200 Sparkwing solar arrays from its high-capacity production facility in Leiden, Netherlands. These solar arrays, reportedly the largest Sparkwing units to date, will consist of two wings with five panels each, providing a photovoltaic area of more than 30 sqm.
The MDA Aurora supply chain supports the delivery of satellite systems for Telesat’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation, Lightspeed, which aims to offer enterprise-class connectivity to customers worldwide.
Rob Postma, Managing Director of Airbus in the Netherlands, said: “We are delighted to be selected as the supplier of solar arrays to partner with MDA Space for Telesat Lightspeed. Our industrialised Sparkwing solar array product not only meets the demands of this ground-breaking constellation project, but is also tailored to ensure optimal performance in space. The Sparkwing solar arrays are designed for series production, ideally suited for constellations, and we will accordingly contribute to a project enabling space connectivity.”
Designed to meet the changing technical and business requirements of the satellite industry, the software-defined MDA Aurora software-defined satellite product line provides operators with flexibility and functionality, dramatically enhancing constellation performance at reduced cost and time to market.
Sparkwing is the world’s first commercially available, off-the-shelf solar array for small satellites. It was originally optimised for Low Earth Orbit missions that require power levels between 100W and 2000W. It offers customers a choice of more than 30 different panel dimensions, configurable into deployable wings with one, two or three panels per wing, with single actuation need (due to only one hold-down per wing). In the meantime, its application range has grown to cover also higher power demands and more and larger panels per wing for missions to LEO and beyond. Next to power generation, the solar array product provides a high stiffness, minimal integration effort (made for integration by the customer) and benign demands on the spacecraft sidewall tolerances. Sparkwing is a product developed by Airbus in the Netherlands, with the support of the Netherlands Space Office and ESA.
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