On April 24, 2007, a Letter of Intent has been signed between Dutch Space (Leiden) and Airborne Composites (The Hague) on behalf of the joint development and production of high tech solar arrays for Space applications. The event took place in the presence of the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes (NIVR), Delft. In the picture below the signing ceremony is shown with from left to right: Ubo Termote, Head of Marketing Dutch Space; Bart Reijnen, CEO Dutch Space; Marco Brinkman, Director Marketing & Sales Airborne Composites and Peter Putting, Director Operations Airborne Composites.

“This is an important milestone for the development of the high tech industry at the former Fokker premises at Ypenburg, The Hague” , according to Marco Brinkman of Airborne, “This creates possibilities for us to get involved in the development of new substrate technologies for solar panels in space and to become a supplier to Dutch Space.” Over the past 1,5 year that Airborne has been established as high-tech SME at Ypenburg, the total staff is doubled from 40 to 80 persons.

Dutch Space, since mid 2006 part of EADS Astrium, is an European and world wide player in the field of solar arrays. The cooperation agreement increases the control over the supply chain. The largest space related company in The Netherlands is as system integrator responsible for the design and integration of arrays. By teaming with Airborne also manufacturing and development is brought closer to home. Ubo Termote of Dutch Space: “The development of special substrates for space applications needs an intensive teaming between engineers and manufacturing specialists. The close physical distance between the two companies is because of this a great advantage”.

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