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Ascent Solar, the leading U.S. innovator in the design and manufacture of featherweight, flexible, and durable CIGS thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solutions, announced that it will soon release a newly developed solar module – Titan – that is optimized for use in a space environment, possessing a record power output of 17.55% efficiency. The product is expected to ship as early as Q1 2024.

Titan will be the first standardized product specially designed for space with a specific power of 2100 W/kg, coupled with best-in-class resilience and flexibility feature. The Titan module is approximately one square foot in size, 10 grams in weight, and possesses a target output of 17 watts. Like all Ascent solar modules, Titan can be used alone or configured into an array, enabling an easy Plug & Fly approach for customers to meet mission specific power and voltage needs.

Titan modules will be the standard building block for Ascent’s line of Space Hardware Developer Kits (HDKs), the Company’s integrated array product offerings that are available in body-mounted, foldable deployable, and rollable deployable configurations. Titan modules are approximately one-foot square sheets, representing a solution that is significantly larger than the typical rigid silicon solar PV cells which are the size of business cards. This drastic part count reduction allows integrated arrays to require less clean room labor and other resources during spacecraft assembly, integration, and test (AIT).

“Our new Titan modules are optimized for efficiency across production, power generation, and spacecraft integration – all of which positively impact cost,” said Paul Warley, CEO of Ascent Solar. “Our efficiency of production allows our products to be price competitive with legacy solutions. The efficiency of power generation in the space domain as well as ease of spacecraft integration demonstrate stark contrasts among competition, especially when compared to alternative silicon solutions that require cumbersome amounts of specialized labor for AIT. I am proud to announce that we are currently quoting Titan module deliveries as early as Q1 of 2024.”

Titan modules are also engineered for efficient program schedules with production of over 5MW of product a year out of Ascent’s Thornton facility. Titan modules also scale efficiently beyond the Company’s current capacity, with the ability to achieve similar production volumes via dedicated fabless production lines that can produce Titan-comprised solar arrays at the pace required by even the most ambitious megaconstellations.

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