Questions tagged [antenna]
Questions about devices which collect and couple electromagnetic signals (communications, radar or other electromagnetic measurements) directly between free space, and conductors (e.g. waveguides or other transmission lines).
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TLE along track error to miss a contact opportunity in UHF
Update: (following @GregMiller's comment):
Lets suppose a spacecraft has performed a boost and not all ground stations received the update, lets suppose the difference between the pre and post ...
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Polarization mismatch between a LEO satellite and ground terminal
Cross-polarization loss between a circularly polarized antenna and vertical or horizontal polarized antenna is known to be -3dB. This is one of the reasons why Circular Polarized antennas are ...
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Antenna wrap material suitable for lunar & cis-lunar environment
I am looking for a wrap (station) antenna for a transceiver (in space/lunar)
Not all materials are suitable for the space environment. Does anyone know what wrap antenna materials I can use?
I have ...
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Has there ever been a dish antenna on a lander? If so, which was the first? How about rovers?
At about 04:49 in Scott Manley's January 30, 2022 video Deep Space Radiation, Black Holes And Other Questions - Episode 14 a painting by the science fiction and ...
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Why does this "satellite antenna at the Laguna Peak Tracking and Injection Facility" look so weird? (two dishes back-to-back)
The video 1967 Navy Satellite Navigation training film (IBM 7094 data center) after 11:57 (older version here) the narrator says:
For every pound of satellite in ...
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Are LHCP L-Band antennas for Cubesats available?
I am designing a cubesat to carry out GNSS reflectometry or GNSS-R. To collect the earth reflected signals, I need a nadir pointing array of patch antennas, with Left Hand Circular Polarisation (LHCP) ...
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What antennas does JAXA use to communicate with its deep space spacecraft? Does it have a deep space network of its own?
@BrendanLuke's answer to Are there currently any spacecraft in orbit around Venus that might (or might not) be at risk of meteoric dust from comet Leonard C/2021 A? alludes to the exciting story of ...
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Which S-Band ISS antenna stopped transmitting to TDRS and was replaced during the recent 2021-12-02 EVA?
CNN's says:
Marshburn and Barron began their spacewalk at 6:15 a.m. ET, and it's expected to last for about six and a half hours. The team will replace a malfunctioning communications antenna.
Live ...
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Are there any selfies of Curiosity or Perseverance with their high gain antenna deployed and "looking up"?
The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have high gain antenna arrays on a mechanical arm that can rise up and point towards Earth and communicate directly.
Has the Curiosity rover ever communicated ...
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How does a 22 dBi X-band "patch" antenna get so much gain and how well behaved is its high-gain radiation pattern?
@NgPh's answer to How will the LICIACube cubesat transmit DART impact images back to Earth? What kind of antenna and radio will it use? quotes LICIACube on DART mission: an asteroid impact captured by ...
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How will the LICIACube cubesat transmit DART impact images back to Earth? What kind of antenna and radio will it use?
MarCO
The Mars Cube Ones or MarCOs were 6U cubesats that were deployed in deep space during the InSight mission to observe it during a critical, dynamic period of its mission, in this case the N ...
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Field of view from Antenna
I am trying to calculate the revisit rate for my satellite constellation. My satellite hosts software-defined radios as its payload. Hence, I need to find the field of view from antenna. My S-band ...
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Antenna for receivers
I am designing a CubeSat 6U in which I am using Software Defined Radio with SIGINT capability as my payload. The payload has 3 reception ports and 2 transmission ports and hence transceiver or ...
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Why do Teledesic satellites look so weird? What are these structures and where's the satellite bus?
source enlarged and sharpened
To my untrained eye I see a weird claw or flower-like antenna array with eight petals in the shape reminiscent of concave dish but not really, that look like they might ...
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How did Sputnik 1's antennas couple to its body, electrically and mechanically?
Looking at https://www.britannica.com/technology/satellite-communication/Development-of-satellite-communication I found the image of a model of Sputnik 1 below.
It shows details of its four rod ...
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Following KRT-10 aboard Salyut-6, have there been any other radio astronomy observations from a space station or crewed capsule?
Space stations have certainly been equipped with infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes for astronomical observation and optical and X-ray communications as well as particle telescopes ...
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How were Soviet/Russian aircraft used to track and/or communicate with spacecraft?
Russian Space Web's Russian ground control and tracking network mentions
A Soviet Iluyshin-18 aircraft configured to maintain communications with spacecraft.
in the sidebar and includes the small ...
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Why are modern satellite ground station and deep space communications dishes with secondary mirrors almost always Cassegrain?
The simplest dish antennas have a concave reflector and their feed horns at the primary focus which is "up in the air".
That has several inconveniences, it's hard to go up there to do any ...
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How does Quantum change it's antenna's shape? (Flagship UK telecommunications satellite just launched)
The BBC's Quantum: Flagship UK telecommunications satellite launches includes the following:
A quarter of the world's big telecoms spacecraft are manufactured in Britain, and the new Quantum platform ...
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What is the pop-up circular disk with spiral pattern in this NASA animation of the Dragonfly helicopter for Titan? Antenna? Kind, band, target?
At 00:36 in the June 2019 NASA video Dragonfly: NASA's New Mission to Explore Saturn's Moon Titan the animation shows it landing then deploying a circular disk with ...
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Transmission and Receiving Rate of a X-Band Antenna
What would be a typical transmission and reception rate range for a X-Band Low Gain Antenna for say 300Km from an orbiter? I figured a High Gain Antenna would be difficult to use since it requires ...
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How would I determine the power usage for a X-Band High Gain Antenna?
Currently I have that for a X-Band High Gain Antenna functioning at 8 Ghz, diameter of 3 meters, and a power transmission of 13.1dBW (20 watts) at a distance of about 8.5 AU has a Gain of 52.44 dBi, ...
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When the Mars 2020 and Mars Science Laboratory missions were in deep space, what antennas did they have available to communicate with Earth?
This thorough answer to Did the Curiosity and Perseverance rover brains do the driving from Earth to Mars? explains that during deep space flight the rovers' computers were doing most of the thinking ...
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Was Dart antenna tested using a DSN antenna located in Australia?
So recently a tweet by a bot which tracks communications by the Deep Space Network stated that:
DSS 43 receiving data from Double Asteroid Redirection Test at 312.5kb/s.
IN LOCK IN LOCK 1 TURBO
11:11 ...
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Why do AST SpaceMobile satellites have antennas much larger than Starlink, whereas they both aim at providing network coverage anywhere on earth?
I read on cnbc.com (mirror):
AST drew the attention of NASA in October, when the U.S. space agency commented on the company’s FCC proposal and said AST’s “extremely large satellites” would create “an ...
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What is a Beam Waveguide dish and why do deep space communications stations use them?
NASA Spaceflight.com's Deep Space Network upgrades and new antennas increase vital communication capabilities says:
NASA’s Deep Space Network, commonly referred to as the DSN, has welcomed a new dish,...
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What are the electrical requirements of the antennas used in Starlink?
My interest is in both the antenna for the ground segment (the "UFO on a stick") and the antennas for the space segment (phased arrays if I'm not mistaken).
I couldn't find around much more ...
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What are the most common practical design specifications for antenna in space?
I'm writing my thesis on antennas for small satellite applications (cubesats).
Apart from the electrical specifications related to the particular application there are also several other "...
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Has a probe ever been lost due to folding its antenna, making it unable to communicate?
I remember hearing the story of a probe on the surface of a planet (maybe Venus) that was lost due to an incredible design flaw, and I'm looking for more details.
The probe had a dish antenna, and ...
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What radio signals have NASA transmitted to outside our solar system?
What radio signal have NASA transmitted to outside our solar system and what did they contain?
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Antenna required to reach titan
There are two 12U cubesats, one in Earth orbit and one in orbit around Titan. They have a transmit power of 700 W (for short periods) and have identical antennas.
What diameter and what type of ...
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Exchange diameter for power in parabolic antenna
If I want to reduce the diameter of a satellite dish, how much power should I add to the transmitter? how is this formula? As I have already been informed a little in this other question I asked: X-...
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Alternatives to the X-Band
is there any other band that can do something similar to what the x-band does? Any that require a smaller antenna and more electrical power?
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X-Band range and data
In summary I am working on a network consisting of 8 cubesat 1U that will be at an orbit altitude of 850Km. The question is that I am working on communications, the idea is that this network of ...
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How do I calculate what antenna I need for my cubesat?
If I want to make a communication satellite, like MarCO, what formulas do I need to calculate the perfect antenna? Is there a difference between the X-Band and the classic UHF? If the cubesat is ...
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General overview of how deep space communications performed
What frequency bands and general classes of antennas are used to communicate with deep space spacecraft?
As an example, if we place a cubesat in orbit around Io, what would the antenna need to be ...
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How do OneWeb satellites' antennas work?
The images below are of actual OneWeb satellites or models. There are two disk-like appendages and an array of linear gizmos which may be an array antenna.
Is it possible to explain how these two ...
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How does this large, flat antenna made from overlapping circles at Australia's Carnarvon Space Tracking Center work?
@Fred's comment links to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's How the Apollo 11 Moon landing was achieved with the vital help of Carnarvon Tracking Station which links to their Carnarvon space ...
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Help understanding how these components of a Honeysuckle Creek dish antenna work
@Fred's comment links to the Curious Droid video How Australia Helped Save Apollo 13 and a little after 02:15 and 03:00 it shows ...
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How exactly were the signals from quad dishes of Apollo Deep Space High-Gain Antenna or Russian B-529 processed for local control of tracking?
The images below (and their sources) show the quad dishes of the Apollo Deep Space High-Gain Antenna and the Russian B529 ground station tracking antenna.
From NASA Technical Note TN D-6723 Apollo ...
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Which deep space spacecraft had main dish antennas that were perforated or made from mesh?
A long time ago I was considering asking why the dish antennas on some deep-space probes were perforated metal or mesh (presumably to save weight), while others were solid.
I'm trying to finally ...
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What antenna is this in an Apollo 15 LM photo?
The video Apollo 15 landing from PDI to Touchdown (found in Why did the Apollo 15 LM violently shake & raise dust after the contact probes touched the lunar surface?) seems to pan across a still ...
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How did Luna 3's pivoting antennas and ribbon antennas work?
This comment below this answer to How was it possible for the Apollo 11 to film and take pictures with such radiation? links to the svengrahn.pp.se post Luna 3 - the first view of the moon's far side.
...
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How were the 100+ antennas around Telstar 1 and 2 configured?
Telstar 1 and 2 demonstrated routing of telephone, television and other communications types between continents.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum pages below contain images of the satellites. ...
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How do these cubesats' whip antennas work?
This answer has identified the three 1U cubesats shown in the question, and links to Engineers Rule's Maya-1: The Philippines’ First CubeSat along with the video Animation of MAYA-1, The Philippines' ...
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Why do these satellite antennas look so weird? (strangely shaped with little white dots...)
The NASA Spaceflight article Arianespace press onward with dual-passenger Ariane 5 launch shows a photo of Intelsat 39 during testing. The dish reflectors are strangely shaped:
rather than being ...
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Impact of having two antennas on link budget calculations
I'm working on link budget of a cubesat mission that needs to have two dipole antennas that are perpendicular to each other. I want to know if having two antennas affect the link budget? losses, and ...
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How large of an antenna would you need to connect to the ISS's WiFi network from Earth?
Supposing I wanted to connect to the ISS's WiFi network from the ground, how large of an antenna would I need to do so, and what kind? Would they need to increase the power on their end or use a ...
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What kind of transmitters and antennas do the Lightsail-2 ground stations use?
The cubesat Lightsail-2 has been deployed and has communicated with ground stations. See The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 Healthy as Mission Team Continues Spacecraft Checkouts, where it says:
...
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How does Deep Space Network's DSS-14 transmit radar and receive it at (almost) the same time? (monostatic radar)
@Hobbes' concise yet thorough answer to the question What are monostatic radar observations, and how will Deep Space Network's DSS-13 be used to observe asteroid 1999 WK4's flyby of Earth? tells us ...
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