Sergio Pellegrino is the Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, JPL Senior Research Scientist and Co-Director of the Space Solar Power Project. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of AIAA and a Chartered Structural Engineer. He is a Past President of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS). He has been the founding chair of the AIAA Spacecraft Structures Technical Committee. He received a Pioneers’ Award in 2002 from the Space Structures Research Center, University of Surrey, NASA Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Team Awards in 2009 and 2016, and the IASS Tsuboi Medal in 2022.
We are developing novel deployable spacecraft structures for the Caltech Space Solar Power Project. Inspired by classical architectures for square solar sails, we proposed a modular, scalable structural concept that exploits a kirigami-based coiling scheme to achieve compact packaging. Its structural modules consist of coilable longerons connected by battens, to form ladder-like space frames. The limits of these structural elements, defined by structural and material instabilities at various scales, have been identified, understood and quantified in order to develop viable structural design methods. A space demonstration of a small scale version of this novel structural concept was recently tested in space. Results from this demonstration will be presented and discussed.