Development of Space Inflatable/Rigidizable Structures Technology

Space inflatable and rigidizable structures technology is one of the emerging technologies that can potentially revolutionize the design and applications of large space structural systems. In the last two years, NASA and its industry and academia partners have made significant progress in addressing important technical challenges for the actual implementation of inflatable structures for space flight systems. A summary assessment on the state of the art of three of the challenges, namely controlled deployment, space rigidization and dynamic modeling and simulation, is presented. Also, two recently developed inflatable structural systems, the inflatable SAR and the NGST inflatable sunshield, are described.