On December 14, 2020, Large Space Structures GmbH signed a contract to deliver a set of Large Deployable Reflectors (LDRs) for the Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer CIMR mission, the newest addition to the European Space Agency Copernicus program. This follows closely the signature of the mission contract by Thales Alenia Space with the European Space Agency.
Over the next 5 years LSS will develop, manufacture, test and qualify the 8-m class rotating Ka-band reflector entrusted by the European Space Agency, the European Commission, and Europe as a whole. The CIMR deployable reflector development alligns itself with the “non-dependancy in space” principle, realised by a decade of research and development projects funded by the European Space Agency and the European Commission. Two notable milestones in the path of Europe getting access to its own, independant Large Deployable Reflector technology are the SCALABLE demonstrator, and the LEA reflector currently under testing.
We are thanking the dedicated team and partners that allowed this historical contract, especially HPS GmbH who is leading the consortium of SMEs delivering the whole Large Deployable Antenna system. We also thank the European Space Agency and Thales Alenia Space for trusting us to develop this critical element and one of the most, if not the most ambitious deployable reflector project.
Large Space Structures GmbH (LSS) is a company based near Munich, Germany, founded in 2012 as a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich where its staff had been working on deployable reflectors and advanced composite membranes for more than two decades. It inherited from its academic background a very strong R&D philosophy, still developing break-through materials and technologies in partnership with various institutional, industrial and academic institutions from 0.5 m to >12 m reflectors and from P to W-band.
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