INTELLIGENCE VALUE
The SOLSTICE program aims to develop resilient and higher energy yielding power systems for space systems to help meet the U.S. Intelligence Community’s increasing need to power energy-intensive payloads for longer durations.
SUMMARY
Power systems on platforms deployed in space frequently limit the operation and scope of onboard payloads and capabilities. Furthermore, challenging environmental conditions and human-created threats can diminish performance suddenly or over time, thereby risking mission objectives. Resilient and higher energy-yielding power systems will allow for greater freedom of operation along with the use of high-energy-consuming capabilities that were previously challenging or impossible to implement. SOLSTICE will develop solar-power and hybrid solar-power systems, and associated components, that can be deployed in space to enable significantly higher mission lifetime energy yields than are possible today.
The SOLSTICE program will be an 18-month effort to develop new power systems that target at least a 50% improvement in time-weighted system efficiency compared to current systems. Teams will focus on proving-out novel components and develop system-level models and designs that leverage those components. Teams will assemble a first-of-a-kind prototype power system that will be assessed against a range of anticipated conditions. Teams will evidence the scalability of their power systems and perform failure analysis testing to inform a possible on-orbit demonstration. The program goal is to demonstrate power systems with at least a 30% time-weighted system efficiency for the first year of operation in space and limited lifetime degradation.
