SpaceX launches solar arrays to space station for power system upgrade

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered away from Florida Thursday and set off after the International Space Station carrying more than 7,000 pounds of supplies, science gear and other hardware, including the first two of six new roll-out solar wings to boost the lab's power.

Rolled up under tension like tightly bound 10-foot-wide carpets, the new arrays will be mounted at an angle to the lab's existing solar wings, unfurling on their own after latches are released, using the stored "strain energy" in uncoiling carbon composite booms on either side. "They don't want to be rolled up, they want to deploy out," said Andrew Rush, CEO of Redwire, the parent company that supplied the new arrays under contract to Boeing. "We just release the restraining mechanism and they, via their own strain energy, deploy out. ... It cuts down on the complexity."