Solar Panels are typically the most expensive subsystems on a spacecraft. This expense is due to a number of factors including; the cost of the solar cells, the cost of the materials used in the solar panel manufacturing process and the cost of the labour involved in the design and production of the panels. 

SmallSat Solar Panels

Clyde Space solar array design and manufacturing techniques have been developed based on traditional solar array assembly techniques, but adapted to reduce assembly costs in order to meet the tighter budget needs of the small satellite community.

Unlike most solar panel manufacturers, Clyde Space also is also known for its high performance small satellite electrical power systems and batteries. This enables us to understand customer requirements and to advise on solar array configuration to achieve optimum power levels.

CubeSat Solar Panels

Clyde Space has supplied CubeSat solar panels for about 50 CubeSats to date (Sept.13). Our solar panels are typically multi-layer Printed Circuit Board (PCB) substrates with a space rated Kapton facesheet.
There are many advantages to using PCB and our experience with this approach means that we have a slick, well proven technique. To ensure good thermal design, we use copper fill on the top and bottom layers and flood the underside of the cells with vias for thermal conductivity purposes. There is no wiring on our panels and they produce a minimal magnetic field.

NanoRacks is a private company that provides standard rack-mounted laboratory facilities and micro-gravity space access to commercial customers at the International Space Station (ISS).

NanoRacks provides 'Plug and Play' micro-gravity research facilities allowing small standardized payloads to be plugged into any of our platforms, providing interface with the International Space Station power and data capabilities.

GMTO Corporation is the non-profit organization based in Pasadena, Calif., USA, that is coordinating the Giant Magellan Telescope project.

Gaia is a space observatory to be launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in November 2013.

The mission aims to compile a 3D space catalogue of approximately 1 billion stars, or roughly 1% of stars in the Milky Way. Successor to the Hipparcos mission, it is part of ESA's Horizon 2000 Plus long-term scientific program. Gaia will monitor each of its target stars about 70 times to a magnitude 20 over a period of 5 years. Its objectives comprise:

• determining the positions, distances, and annual proper motions of 1 billion stars 
• detection of tens of thousands of extra-solar planetary systems
• capacity to discover Apohele asteroids with orbits that lie between Earth and the Sun, a region that is difficult for Earth-based telescopes to monitor since this region is only in the sky during or near the daytime
• detection of up to 500,000 distant quasars
• more accurate tests of Albert Einstein's general relativity theory

Gaia will create an extremely precise three-dimensional map of stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond, and map their motions which encode the origin and subsequent evolution of the Milky Way.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory (or simply IceCube) is a neutrino telescope constructed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

Its thousands of sensors are distributed over a cubic kilometre of volume under the antarctic ice. Similar to its predecessor, the Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), IceCube consists of spherical optical sensors called Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), each with a photomultiplier tube (PMT) and a single board data acquisition computer which sends digital data to the counting house on the surface above the array. IceCube was completed on 18 December 2010, New Zealand time. 

DOMs are deployed on "strings" of sixty modules each at depths ranging from 1,450 to 2,450 meters, into holes melted in the ice using a hot water drill. IceCube is designed to look for point sources of neutrinos in the TeV range to explore the highest-energy astrophysical processes.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is Israel's prime aerospace and aviation manufacturer, producing aerial systems for both military and civilian usage.

It had 16,000 employees in 2007. IAI is wholly owned by the government of Israel. 

Although IAI's main focus is aviation and high-tech electronics, it also works  on a number of space-based systems and manufactures space hardware:

• AMOS communications satellites,
• EROS, Amos and Ofeq Satellite series,
• RISAT-2 satellite,
• Shavit space launcher,
• CubeSats satellites,
• TecSAR reconnaissance satellite.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a ground-based extremely large telescope planned for completion in 2020.

It will consist of seven 8.4 m diameter primary segments, with the resolving power of a 24.5 m primary mirror and collecting area equivalent to a 22.0 m one, (which is about 368 square meters).

The telescope is expected to have over 5-10 times the light-gathering ability of existing instruments. Three mirrors are cast and the mountain top is being prepared for construction. A total of seven primary mirrors are planned, but it can begin operation with only four.

MTG, Meteosat Third Generation, is a serie of geostationary meteorological satellites that will be procured and operated by the organisation EUMETSAT. 

Considering the long development cycle for a new observational space system, EUMETSAT has been working on the definition and the planning for a Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) system since the year 2000, as a continuation of the Meteosat (1st generation) and MSG (2nd generation) missions.

The Meteosat Third Generation series will comprise six satellites, with the first spacecraft likely to be ready for launch from 2018. The in orbit configuration will consist of two parallel positioned satellites, the MTG-I imager (a 3-tonne satellite with 16 nominal channels) and the MTG-S sounder. The sounder will be one of the key innovations in the new programme, allowing Meteosat satellites, for the first time, to not just image weather systems but to analyse the atmosphere layer-by-layer and perform far more detailed chemical composition studies.

Unlike the first and second generation Meteosat series, MTG will be based on three axes stabilised platforms, meaning the instruments will be pointed at the Earth for 100% of their in orbit time. Such improvements are necessary to achieve compliance with more demanding user requirements on spatial resolution; repeat cycle and signal to noise ratio, and are a prerequisite to conduct soundings from geostationary orbit.

MTG components providing continuity of MSG services need to be available around 2015, before the end of the nominal lifetime of MSG. MTG preparatory activities started end of 2000 in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), following the decision of the EUMETSAT Council to proceed with a Post-MSG User Consultation Process. The process is aimed at capturing the foreseeable needs of users of EUMETSAT's satellite data in the 2015-2025 timeframe.

The JUpiter ICy Moon Explorer (JUICE) is a planned European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft to visit the Jovian system, focused in particular on studying three of Jupiter's moons; Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.

It will characterise these worlds, all thought to have significant bodies of liquid water beneath their surfaces, as potentially habitable environments. 

JUICE is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. Planned for launch in 2022 and arrival at Jupiter in 2030, it will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is a NASA satellite that is making a map of the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space.

The mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and launched with a Pegasus-XL rocket on October 19, 2008. 

Results from IBEX have repeatedly shocked the scientific community and overturned old theories. The first shock came when it revealed a narrow ribbon of energetic neutral atom (ENA) emission. Then it showed shifts over time in this band. Another surprise came when no bow shock was found. The repercussions of overturning the bow shock theory are huge, because decades of research are based on that concept.

The design and operation of the mission is being led by the Southwest Research Institute, with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center serving as co-investigator institutions responsible for the IBEX-Hi and IBEX-Lo sensors respectively. The Orbital Sciences Corporation manufactured the spacecraft bus and was the location for spacecraft environmental testing.

The nominal mission baseline duration was two years to observe the entire solar system boundary. This was completed by 2011 and its mission was extended to 2013 to continue observations.

see also the SWRI site dedicated to IBEX.