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World-class provider of compound semiconductor and lighting products; including space and terrestrial solar cells, panels and arrays; and solar simulation and searchlight systems.

Welcome to Spectrolab, the world's leading manufacturer of space solar cells and panels. Spectrolab's product portfolio includes terrestrial concentrator solar cells and modules, searchlight systems (NightsunŽ series), solar simulators and optoelectronic products such as pigtailed photodetector packages, devices.

Spectrolab is headquartered in Sylmar, California, approximately 20 miles north of Los Angeles. The company was founded in 1956, and is one of the world's leading suppliers of photovoltaic solar cells, solar panels, searchlights, and solar simulators. With an employee population of approximately 400, Spectrolab has been supplying solar array panels to the space industry for 50 years.

Spectrolab's origins can be traced back to a group of engineers who began providing high-quality optical filters and mirrors for use in government contracts. Spectrolab established its credibility in the space industry with Pioneer 1, in 1958, carrying the company's first body-mounted solar panels; Explorer 6, the satellite that in 1959 provided the first photo of Earth from space, carrying Spectrolab's first solar arrays; and the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, which placed the first solar cell panel on the moon. Galaxy IIIC, the world's highest capacity satellite launched on June 15, 2002. It carries the latest solar cell technology (Improved Triple-Junction with a minimum average efficiency of 26.5%) developed and manufactured at Spectrolab. The Ultra-Triple-Junction solar cells, with a minimum average efficiency of 28.3%, is now in production and gives satellite operators the choice of increasing the capacity of their existing satellite platforms.

As the demand for more powerful, more efficient, and more capable satellites increased in the 1970s and 1980s. Spectrolab continued to lead the industry with increasingly more powerful solar cells, and with each successive innovation, increased the efficiency from the 12% conversion rate of a silicon solar cell to a maximum efficiency of 29%, using state-of-the-art gallium arsenide on germanium wafers to produce multi-junction solar cells. By the year 2009, the company hopes to offer solar cells with efficiencies as high as 33%.

Early in the development of solar cells, Spectrolab recognized an industry need to have the capability to test solar cells and other devices in the vacuum of space. In 1962, the company designed and began manufacturing both steady-state and pulsed simulators, which have since become an industry standard.

Spectrolab also continues its innovation in searchlight technology. The NightsunŽ II was introduced in 2001. Back in 1969, Bell Helicopter became the first customer for Spectrolab's first NightsunŽ searchlight. At 30-million candlepower, the NightsunŽ series searchlights are the world's most powerful airborne searchlights. They are used by many fleets, including the British Ministry of Defense, which uses the NightsunŽ exclusively.

Today, customers around the world rely on Spectrolab's NightsunŽ series searchlights to help pilots navigate at night. Kazan Helicopters of Russia and the Royal Netherlands Police use Spectrolab searchlights. In the United States, the U.S. Air Force has ordered searchlights for use on several of its helicopters, and the U.S. Border Patrol also relies on searchlights designed and built by Spectrolab.

The foundation of Spectrolab's success lies in its ability to rapidly transfer cutting-edge technology from a laboratory setting to a manufacturing process. The company's first mass production line was established in 1982. Today Spectrolab has the ability to produce nearly one megawatt of solar cells per year, enough to outfit 100 10,000-watt spacecraft, such as the Boeing 601 satellite, manufactured by Boeing Satellite Systems, the world's largest satellite manufacturer.

Spectrolab has invested extensively in high-technology machinery to achieve its high production rate. In 1993, the company installed the world's largest advanced MOVPE (Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy) reactor as part of a high-capacity gallium arsenide solar cell production line. Through the addition of these and other manufacturing process enhancements, the company hopes to continue to increase its production capacity and capture even more of the world's solar cell market.