Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Compact Deployable Antenna For Cubesat Units, Sarah Bolton, Dominic Doty, Peter Rivera
Compact Deployable Antenna For Cubesat Units, Sarah Bolton, Dominic Doty, Peter Rivera
Mechanical Engineering
CubeSats are an appealing platform for space exploration due to their low build and launch costs. Due to their small size, communication rates are often severely limited, preventing missions beyond low earth orbit. A low cost, high gain, high frequency antenna is needed to extend the capabilities of CubeSats.
The goal of the project was to design and build an axisymmetric parabolic antenna that could be deployed from a 10cm x 10cm x 15cm (1.5U) volume and operate at Ka band frequencies. The design selected consisted of an expanding perimeter truss supporting a tensioned mesh reflector. The perimeter truss was …