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Nine Merlin main engines propel a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into the sky over the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday. Credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now
Trailing a brilliant orange flame, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into orbit Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a Dragon cargo ship hauling experiments and new solar arrays to enhance the International Space Station’s power generation capability.
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Two new solar array wings for the International Space Station are rolled up inside the trunk of SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon capsule for launch Thursday. Credit: SpaceX
Two new solar array wings for the International Space Station are packed inside the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule for launch Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center, the first pair of six upgraded roll-out panels to give the orbiting outpost a power boost.
NASA space station prime contractor
Boeing. The solar arrays are now undergoing flight package integration in preparation for launch on
SpaceX’s 22nd commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) next month.
Redwire designed, manufactured, and tested the six new solar arrays, equipped with upgraded solar cells from Boeing’s Spectrolab. The ROSA arrays were developed by Redwire subsidiary Deployable Space Systems (DSS) and were first successfully demonstrated on ISS in June 2017. Each array provides more than 20 kilowatts of power each and a combined 120 kilowatts to the ISS, representing a 20 to 30 percent improvement over previous systems.
Modular versions of ROSA are also being produced for NASA’s DART Mission,