Deployable Baffle by SABER System (DeBSS) (DeBSS)

Optical payloads are becoming increasingly complex as innovative designs maximize every cubic centimeter available for launch within the expanding range of candidate launch vehicle fairings. Baffles have emerged as critical components on space-based telescopes for enhancing performance by significantly reducing stray light and providing Micro Meteorite and Orbital Debris (MMOD) shielding to protect the sensitive primary mirrors. Heliospace recognizes the growing need for deployable baffle technologies and has begun development on a 1m class tensegrity Deployable Baffle by SABER™ System (DeBSS). The TRL 3 DeBSS design employs a pseudo tensegrity structure aiming to compactly stow for launch and deploy on orbit nominally using Heliospace’s TRL 9 Spiral Actuator and Boom, Extended then Rigidized, or SABER™. The phase 1 proposal seeks to assess the feasibility of a class of deployable space telescope baffles ranging in size from 1 to 7+ meters. Using the described DeBSS as an early development model, technical objectives will aim to identify the risks and solutions involved with managing required cables and membranes that must not present snag risks during deployment. The resulting baffle concept may be highly desirable to spacecraft or optical payload operators around the globe for use in minimizing stray light and added MMOD protection to their payload. Heliospace believes that between the civil, commercial, and defense aerospace arenas, the technology and architecture proposed will have use cases that transverse all sizes of optical payloads. Vetting the inherent configuration and deployment complexities of a DeBSS for a nominal 1m class baffle will enable the development of a minimum viable product that could be marketed today to government and commercial customers. Furthermore, a technical assessment at this scale is precursory to better understand the scalability constraints of similar baffle and structure architectures an order of magnitude larger.

The James Webb Space Telescope demonstrated that spacecraft incorporating deployable technologies allow for larger, more powerful systems to be launched, overcoming the size constraints of payload fairings. As space-borne telescopes continue to expand their aperture surface areas through deployable primary mirrors, baffles will inevitably become essential deployable subsystems for higher-quality data collection. However, the current State of the Art (SOA) in baffle technologies within the public domain has seen little innovation over the decades, with flagship observatories such as the Hubble and Roman Space Telescopes relying solely on fixed baffles for their 2.4m apertures, while the JWST does not utilize a baffle at all. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), in its early architecture development phase and designed for a minimum 7m class primary mirror, will almost certainly require a deployable baffle to mitigate performance risks associated with stray light and MMOD. By leveraging the use of an early development model of a Deployable Baffle by SABER™ System (DeBSS), key insights into driving factors such as deployment forces and stray light closeouts can be assessed. Validating an analytical math model with empirical data obtained from various 1m class development unit tests will allow for Heliospace to perform a deployable baffle scalability assessment. This assessment will interrogate the feasibility of scaling the DeBSS design for primary mirrors ranging in size from 1- 7m. Furthermore, additional structure options, non-SABER™ deployment mechanisms, and breakpoints such as push out force, system mass, and stowed volumes will be included in the scalability assessment. Deployable baffles have largely been absent from flagship missions, understanding the challenges associated with developing a deployable baffle which maintains high levels of performance is germane to NASAs mission, especially for potential use in the HWO. Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions for subsystems in any market can be beneficial to designers and engineers as they provide alternative design options at lower costs than an in-house or custom development effort could produce. For space-based systems, qualifying hardware for operation in on-orbit environments requires a robust development process to advance the TRL and can introduce schedule and cost risks to a project. To mitigate these risks, it is common to source hardware and mechanism solutions from established vendors. A survey of active commercial space companies today has identified a gap in the availability of a COTS deployable baffle solution. With over 300 launches expected in 2025 alone, and a general consensus that the space-based economy’s year-over-year growth will continue, it is reasonable to believe that the demand for a commercially available deployable baffle solution will increase over the next decade. SOA telescopes have primarily relied on fixed barrel baffle approaches, potentially constraining other elements of the spacecraft. The Deployable Baffle by SABER™ System (DeBSS) architecture proposed offers a lightweight, volume conscious, and deployable design that could be appealing to many spacecraft designers. A COTS solution could reduce the development risks of an internal baffle design while still providing the necessary technical performance required by optical payloads. The deployable nature allows for spacecraft and payload designers to optimize the stowed configuration of a design such that other subsystems can utilize the increased available volume that would otherwise be occupied by a fixed baffle. Planned technical objectives ensure that any future DeBSS brought to market has assessed the highest priority performance goals typically expected of a baffle—particularly the ability to mitigate inadvertent stray light and the ability to deploy MLI blanketing capable of providing MMOD protection to the payload.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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