SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Tendeg, LLC
686 South Taylor Avenue, Suite 108
Louisville, CO 80027 - 3000
(303) 929-4466

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Neal Beidleman
neal@tendeg.com
686 S. Taylor Ave, Ste 108
Louisville, CO 80027 - 3000
(970) 948-0663

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Gregg Freebury
gregg@tendeg.com
686 South Taylor Avenue, Suite 108
Louisville, CO 80027 - 3000
(303) 929-4466

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 4
End: 5

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Precision Deployable Optical Structures and Metrology is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
This PhaseII program will focus on integrating viable solar cell blanket assemblies onto the inner disk of a starshade needed for potential exoplanet discovery missions. The Phase II will design and analyze structural interfaces, harness requirements, harness routing, survival and durability for packaging, launch and on-orbit environmental requirements. The program will involve numerous hardware demonstration units and testing and culminate in a full scale demonstration unit with a portion of active solar cells. This will move the inner disk with solar cells to TRL 5. The inner disk of the baseline starshade is approximately 10 m in diameter. This large surface area is an ideal location for solar arrays which will allow for solar electric propulsion. SEP will allow the starshade to transition to new orbit positions relative to the telescope more efficiently which will expand the exoplanet science during the mission lifetime.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Technology developed during this SBIR program will be directly applied to any NASA telescope program involved with exoplanet discovery and characterization that needs an external occulter, or Starshade. The Exo-S STDT Final Report identified a potential rendezvous mission with WFIRST/AFTA because it is a large astrophysics telescope capable of supporting direct imaging with a starshade, and the current timing of its development fits with a potential starshade development and launch.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
This solar array system would apply to any commercial or DOD application where a high stiffness, high strength solar array is needed. The design is scalable up to 20 to 30 m diameters which could achieve up to 300 KW. Arrays of this size can power solar electric propulsion systems. The strength and stiffness will allow high acceleration and maneuver loads.