Roccor, founded in 2012 and acquired by Redwire in 2020, is a manufacturer specializing in deployable spacecraft structures and thermal management systems. They supply deployable booms, structures, antennas, thermal products, and solar arrays. Their customers included NASA, the U.S. military, and various commercial space companies, with their technology used on numerous space missions.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
Roccor is based in Colorado and has a performance record of more than 75 successfully launched systems in orbit.
The Viasat cubesat has a mass of 23 kg, uses a 12U spacecraft bus from Blue Canyon Technologies, and carries an L-band antenna from Roccor.
Roccor is working with BluFlux to complete environmental testing of a helical L-band antenna for XVI, an Air Force Research Laboratory program to demonstrate communications relay with a Link 16 terminal on a small satellite.
Roccor completed radio frequency testing of the antenna scheduled to launch later 2020 on the satellite housing Viasat’s Link 16 military communications terminal.
Roccor developed the antenna boom under a 2017 Air Force Research Laboratory Small Business Innovation Research contract.
Viasat selected Blue Canyon Technologies to manufacture the 12-unit XVI cubesat and selected Roccor to supply the antenna.
Roccor and BluFlux, both based in Louisville, Colorado, developed a two-meter-long helical antenna that stows inside the volume of a two-unit cubesat and extends on-orbit using a slit-tube composite boom.
Roccor plans to continue evolving its Link 16 antenna design to create a production-ready model under a $3,000,000 Small Business Innovation Research contract awarded after Air Force Space Pitch Day in November.
The Air Force invited eight firms—Analytical Space, Arete Associates, Lucid Circuit, Numerica, Omitron, Roccor, Space Micro, and Synaptech—to apply to increase their SBIR phase two awards from $750,000 to $3,000,000.
Roccor solar arrays are designed to generate several kilowatts of power to move spacecraft from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit after launch.