Thursday, EMCORE Corp. (EMKR) received a contract from Dutch Space of Leiden, The Netherlands to manufacture, test, and deliver the solar panels to power the Cygnus spacecraft. The spacecraft is being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) for NASA's Commercial Resupply Service project. With all options exercised the total value of the contract would be in excess of $15 million.
Under the CRS project, Orbital will carry out eight pressurized space cargo missions beginning in early 2011 and running through 2015 to provide a U.S.-produced and-operated automated cargo delivery service to the International Space Station. An initial demonstration flight will be carried out as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services project, which provided NASA incentives to the developing commercial launch services industry.
The solar panels to be delivered to Dutch Space will use EMCORE's ZTJ solar cells. With a sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 30%, the ZTJ solar cell is the highest performance space qualified multi-junction solar cell available in the world today. Production of the solar panels will take place at EMCORE's state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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