Patent — available for licensing
Dual-Polarized, Wideband, Lightweight P-band Antenna Element and Array
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Many critical science objectives demand the capability to penetrate meters of dust and regolith to reveal buried terrain. While NASA’s primary focus includes the Moon and Mars, future missions targeting Venus, Mercury, asteroids, and other celestial bodies will also require technologies capable of deep subsurface penetration, mapping sub-surface features at meter-scale resolution. For the Space Exploration Synthetic Aperture Radar (SESAR) mission, NASA scientists needed a lightweight, beam-agile synthetic aperture radar (SAR) operating at P-band frequencies to achieve these objectives on the Lunar and Martian surfaces. Innovators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have developed a dual-polarized, wideband, lightweight P-band antenna element and array for spaceborne radar applications. The antenna array utilizes lightweight, low-profile elements that serve as modular building blocks, forming “array panels” that can be scaled up into larger, multi-panel arrays. The novel design features a mostly planar conductor geometry paired with a robust, lightweight composite material construction. The antenna element and array design are also scalable to other frequencies (e.g., L-, S-, C-, or X-bands) for radar applications where low mass and beam agility are crucial.