When on December 12, 2017 the Ariane 5 was launched with four additional Galileo satellites aboard, I couldn’t be more proud. Not only is it one of the largest navigation satellite constellations ever, Ariane was also carrying four more Galileo navigation satellites. With sixteen of its substrate panels built by Airborne. What is so special about these panels?
At Airborne, we know all there is to know about high-tech composites. And that is some tricky stuff. As maintenance and repair is not an option in space, panels have to be very light-weight and 100% on quality. I mean: flying in 22,922km altitude orbit isn’t just extremely cold, it is also quite far away from our factory.
Lighter, faster, stronger
The last Galileo launch brought the Galileo system to total 22 satellites in orbit (4 IOV + 18 FOC). Airborne delivered 88 panels for the Galileo FOC satellites to solar-arrays prime Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands. And last month we started with the manufacturing of yet another batch of 48 more substrates for the next 8 Galileo FOC satellites. Looking back, that is quite an achievement. We started in 2010, when this project lifted off. Today we have delivered over 200 large flight panels, including Galileo and a number of other paramount ESA satellite programs.
Manufacturing these extremely light-weighted, yet exceptionally strong, panels in a cost-efficient manner asked for a specific production facility. So, we successfully developed our inspection equipment for testing the panels. This is very specialized work as every square millimeter is ultrasonically inspected. Specially trained employees worked on this series of panels to perform the precision assembly, which helped achieve a monthly production rate of about 2 to 3 panels per week. For the space market, that is efficient serial production. But our aim is infinity and beyond: an even faster production scheme! And not just any faster scheme, but an order-of-magnitude faster production scheme for Mega-constellations.
Innovations for Newspace
This faster production is required for Mega-constellations as the Newspace market is facing a huge demand for affordable satellites to fully bridge the ‘Digital Divide’; making Internet access available and affordable for everyone. That will become a really interesting challenge! As the sector will need a production of hundreds to thousands of satellites, time and cost saving solutions are urgently needed. Moreover, commercial space initiatives are demanding more affordable Launchers. How do we achieve that? – with Airborne Composites Automation. Based on the lessons learned and investments made, at Airborne we are ready to enter the Newspace market.
