A big component tightly tucked into a small package aboard NASA’s soil observatory can trace its roots to Santa Barbara County.
Northrop Grumman Astro Aerospace, which has facilities in Carpinteria and Goleta, designed and manufactured the unique reflector antenna and the boom on NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite.
SMAP is sitting inside a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket set to blastoff from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base between 6:20 and 6:23 a.m. Thursday.
For now, SMAP’s unique reflector antenna remains stowed away for launch and is scheduled to start being deployed two weeks after arriving in orbit. Fully deployed, the reflector antenna built by the Astro Aerospace looks like a backyard trampoline.
“This is very exciting. It’s a big milestone for us,” said Edward Keay, director of business development and former program manager for SMAP. “This is the first of a new product line for us.”
SMAP marks the firm’s ninth reflector using its AstroMesh technology, and the previous ones “worked worked flawlessly on orbit,” Keay said.
The NASA satellite employs the firm’s new AstroMesh-Lite series of reflectors ranging from 3 to 8 meters to accommodate small satellite applications.
“This one happens to be six meters, so it’s the first of that genre,” Keay said.
At six meters or nearly 20 feet in diameter, SMAP’s rotating mesh antenna “dwarfs the size of the instruments and spacecraft, and is the largest rotating antenna of its kind that NASA has yet deployed,” the space agency said.
SMAP will measure moisture in Earth’s soil, producing a global map every three days. This data, scientists said, will be useful for flooding, droughts, disease control and more.
Some of the Astro Aerospace staff — the firm has 75 employees in the county — began working on the SMAP’s early studies in 2008. They spent more than two years designing and manufacturing the structure.
In the past year, Astro Aerospace staff has supported Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff readying the craft for flight.
The SMAP mission marks the first time the firm’s mesh deployable reflector will be used for a science satellite, added Daniel Ochoa, product development manager. It’s also the first time a large antenna will be spinning atop a spacecraft.
“For us to have product on something like that is very exciting,” Ochoa said. “Everyone here at Astro Aerospace is excited and proud to work with JPL on the mission.”
For launch, the entire antenna is packed into a cylinder 1 foot in diameter by 4 feet to fit inside the rocket’s payload fairing. In all, it weighs approximately 125 pounds.
“That’s really our bread and butter — trying to figure out how to fit these large structures in these tight small packages,” Ochoa said.
AstroAerospace also must ensure the deployed antenna is stiff enough to keep the shape needed so the energy is correctly reflected off the mesh surface into the proper pattern.
With spaceflight costly, satellite builders struggle to make components small to keep the program price lower. Yet Astro Aerospace has successfully conquered the engineering challenge to create the deployable mesh technology, Astro Aerospace officials noted.
“If you’re going to put something into space that’s very, very large, it needs to be able to fold down,” Keay said, adding the mesh looks like a nylon stocking. The system also uses a light graphite epoxy structure that helps hold its shape.
“This particular application was very challenging,” Keay added. “In the past, the reflectors we’ve built have been for communication satellites so they mount to the side of the spacecraft and they stay there during the whole life on orbit.”
In addition to the actual launch, deployment of components is one of the riskiest aspects of the business, Keay noted.
SMAP isn’t the firm’s only NASA mission. It also will provide components on the James Webb SpaceTelescope, scheduled to launch in 2018.
For now, it is focused on SMAP and thrilled at the chance to tell their story.
“We’re just really excited to see this go, and it’s an opportunity for us to showcase our hardware,” Keay added.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.