Momentus and Ascent Solar Technologies Partner to Bring Leading-Edge Solar Arrays to Market

Innovative solar arrays to address burgeoning demand

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 17, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) ("Momentus") and Ascent Solar Technologies, (Nasdaq: ASTI) (“Ascent”) today announced a new partnership to jointly market leading-edge solar arrays utilizing the low-cost Tape Spring Solar Array (TASSA) being developed by Momentus and the high performance of Ascent’s flexible, lightweight photovoltaic modules.

The rapid growth in the production and deployment of thousands of satellites in space has led to the burgeoning need for low-cost, reliable and high performing solar arrays. Momentus and Ascent are excited to partner to market a leading-edge solar array designed to provide key advantages to customers such as lower costs, resiliency with less degradation in the harsh environment in space, flexibility, and the ability to efficiently generate large amounts of power.

Building off the successes of the pathfinder demonstration of TASSA that was launched to Low-Earth Orbit on the Vigoride-6 mission one year ago and tested in space for several months, Momentus plans to add a high-power photovoltaic array as a differentiated feature of the next iteration of the TASSA product under development. Last year’s pathfinder TASSA demonstration validated solar blankets from Ascent, as a mass efficient and robust power generation solution. Momentus plans to incorporate in TASSA new higher efficiency solar blankets from Ascent composed of space industry optimized Titan Modules, achieving even lower cost per kW of power.

TASSA will continue to utilize Vigoride hardware with spaceflight heritage to provide customers an entire array subsystem, complete with solar array rotation actuators and controllers. This approach is oriented at streamlining mission schedules and minimizing clean room bottlenecks during spacecraft assembly integration and testing. TASSA is designed for responsive launch as well as more efficient flatpack configurations which allow for more satellites to fit within launch vehicle payload fairings.

“TASSA is designed to generate extensive power at very low cost while minimizing mass and volume,” said Rob Schwarz, Momentus CTO. “TASSA is intended to allow Smallsats to generate kilowatts of power on orbit without breaking their mass, thermal, or cost budgets. This design optimization also facilitates improved satellite packing efficiencies and allows constellations to be fielded quicker and cheaper.”