Affordable and convenient access to electrical power is essential for all spacecraft and is a critical design driver for the next generation of smallsats , including CubeSats , which are currently extremely power limited . The Lightweight Integrated Solar Array ( LISA ) , a concept designed , prototyped , and tested at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center ( MSFC ) in Huntsville , Alabama provides an affordable , lightweight , scalable , and easily manufactured approach for power generation in space . This flexible technology has many wide - ranging applications from serving small satellites to providing abundant power to large spacecraft in GEO and beyond . By using very thin , ultraflexible solar arrays adhered to an inflatable or deployable structure , a large area ( and thus large amount of power ) can be folded and packaged into a relatively small volume .