[11-06-07 – Satellite Today] Five Northrop Grumman engineers received a patent for a payload positioning boom, the company announced Nov. 6.
    The boom, which attaches the payload to the spacecraft, increases the ability of space telescopes to observe more of the sky by allowing a wider range of elevation angles.
The boom improves telescope performance and enables the use of a smaller sunshield by isolating the telescope from spacecraft vibrations and heat, and the boom’s ability to move
the center of the satellite’s mass minimizes fuel usage and tracking adjustments.
    The boom will have application on NASA’s Signal Aperture Far Infrared telescope, which is scheduled to be launched between 2020 and 2025 as well as on the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which will use a coronagraph operating at visible wavelengths and a large-baseline interferometer operating in infrared to study planets outside
our solar system.
    The work was funded by the company’s independent research and development initiative to develop design concepts for future space observatories.