ARISE antenna

Supermassive black holes are among the most spectacular objects in the Universe, and are laboratories for physics in extreme conditions. Understanding the physics of massive black holes and related phenomena is a primary goal of the ARISE mission. The scientific goals of the mission are described in detail on the ARISE web site http://arise.ipl.nasa.gov and in the ARISE Science Goals document. The following paper, as the title suggests, is not intended to be a comprehensive description of ARISE, but deals only with one aspect of the ARISE mission-the inflatable antenna which is the key element of the ARISE spacecraft. This spacecraft,due to the extensive reliance on inflatables, may be considered as the first generation Gossamer spacecraft.