The membrane antenna technology is a very promising approach to obtain large aperture with light weight and low stowed volume. In the past decades, extensive studies have been carried out on active and passive membrane antennas. However, the practical spaceborne applications are rare due to many challenges, e.g., the surface accuracy maintenance, the on-orbit reliability, and the environmental compatibility. This paper summarizes the history and state-of-art progresses on spaceborne membrane antennas. Curved surface reflectors, conformal active membrane antennas, planar array membrane antennas, and planar reflectarray membrane antennas have been introduced, respectively. Radiofrequency design, deploying mechanism, material, experiment, application, and analysis method have been presented. By concluding the advantages and challenges of the current membrane antennas, this paper is aimed at providing a perspective of the existing problems and future trend of spaceborne membrane antennas.

In this paper, four novel evaluation indices and corresponding hierarchical optimization strategies are proposed for a deployable solar array system considering panel flexibility and joint clearance. The deployable solar array model consists of a rigid main-body, two panels and four key mechanisms, containing torsion spring mechanism, closed cable loop mechanism, latch mechanism and attitude adjustment mechanism. Rigid and flexible components are established by Nodal Coordinate Formulation and Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation, respectively. The clearance joint model is described by nonlinear contact force model and amendatory Coulomb friction model. The latch time, stabilization time, maximum contact force and impulse sum of the contact force of the solar array system are selected as the four novel evaluation indices to represent the complex dynamic responses of a deployable solar array with clearance joints instead of the lock torque widely used in conventional works. To eliminate the gross errors caused by the nonlinear and nonsmooth mechanical properties, a hierarchical optimization strategy based on an adaptive simulated annealing algorithm and a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm is adopted for the solar array system with clearance joints. Results indicate that the effects of panel flexibility on the evaluation index responses and design optimization of the solar array system cannot be neglected. Besides, increasing the weight factor of the stabilization time index of the rigid system may compensate for the differences in optimal results of the rigid–flexible coupling system. That may provide some references for optimization design of deployable space mechanisms considering clearance joints.