Composites Structures for Space Applications

OUR SPECIALTY: Optimizing materials for the exacting requirements of extreme environments

THE BENEFIT TO YOU: We maximize efficiencies in qualification and production to meet and exceed your requirements

OUR BUSINESS: Customer-focused, employee-owned, agile

THE TEAM: In-depth and broad range of experience in composites for space applications

Payload, Optical, and Deployable Structures

Launch Vehicle Structures

Solar Power (Solar Arrays and Wings)

Carbon fiber bus structure with metallic inserts

BUS Structures

Space-ready STRATO™ Products

ACCELERATE: Reduce traditionally long lead times into a fraction of the original schedule.

SPACE-READY AND IN STOCK: We inventory space-qualified materials

DESIGN SHORTCUTS: Our made-to-order tubes, plates, panels and substrates can be incorporated to development, one-off, and flight vehicles with consistently increasing heritage across a range of challenging environments and mission needs.

DISKSAT: STRATO™ enabled DiskSat, which is pictured here. To learn more, read our press release RWC Ships First Set of Solar Array Substrate/Back-Up Structure Assemblies for the DiskSat Program.

Constellation-level Production Capacity

We are one of the few composites houses that can do high-volume production of spacecraft hardware. Panels and tubes are our specialty but we also excel with complex geometries and assemblies.

SOLAR WINGS: We have produced solar panel wing assemblies for Space Development Agency (SDA) Tranche programs such as T1-TRK and T2-TRK.

Design and Engineering Capabilities

STRATEGIC VISION: Our team has deep materials expertise in a wide variety of structural and thermal distortion related applications. We understand the intricacies and complexities of these types of designs and can help with the best material choices for performance, schedule, and cost. We routinely meet high performance requirements on tight schedules and budgets with these strategies.

VERTICALLY INTEGRATED: Our in-house fabrication and testing means reduced risk and compressed schedules.

Learn more about our innovation with composites for space by reading the case study for our hardware shown here, Satellite Imaging Optical Metering Structure.

In-house Testing

STRUCTURAL:

Our team has brought a range of finished part structural testing in-house to ensure the full program can happen under one roof. Testing ranges from panel insert pull testing to multi-axis high load structural testing on panel assemblies and strut assemblies.

COUPONS:

We have brought a suite of ASTM coupon testing in house to support both characterization of new materials as well programmatic work-in-progress (WIP) testing to verify final deliverables have been processed properly to all specifications.

THERMAL CYCLING:

Rock West has capabilities to thermal cycle a wide range of coupons and hardware from -180°C to +180°C with chambers ranging from 2’x2’x2’ to 10’x8’x9’ to 3’x3’x50’