Redwire has successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for its ELSA solar arrays supporting an undisclosed national security programme in low Earth orbit (LEO) through a contract with Moog Inc. The milestone clears the way for manufacturing and integration of the solar arrays with Moog’s METEOR satellite bus.
Under a contract with Moog announced in March 2026, Redwire is responsible for the system design, manufacturing, testing and delivery of ELSA solar array wings. ELSA has also been baselined by Moog as a standard component of its METEOR ESPA-Grande satellite bus.
The METEOR satellite bus is designed to support missions across different orbits and a variety of flight profiles, including pathfinder constellation missions and other disaggregated architectures.
The CDR confirmed that the ELSA design had undergone a detailed assessment and was in compliance with the customer requirements for the programme.
ELSA is designed for customers seeking to minimise the stowed volume and mass of solar arrays while maintaining performance and pricing comparable with conventional solar array solutions. According to Redwire, ELSA provides 50% more power by volume than traditional solar arrays.
Designed for volume production, ELSA uses a modular and scalable architecture intended to support faster production and delivery while reducing costs.
Redwire provides space power solutions and has a track record of solar array deployments on space missions. The company said its solar arrays have achieved a 100% on-orbit success rate on flagship missions including the International Space Station and NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission.
