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MIT's Inflatable Antennae Could Boost Small Satellite Communications
coondoggie writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts's Institute of technology say they have developed an antenna for small satellites (known as cubesats) that can fold into a compact space and inflate when in orbit. The inflatable antenna lets a CubeSat transmit data back to Earth at a distance seven times farther than that of existing CubeSat communications."
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Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
"Can't they get the signal lasers working? Much better for max signal strength, bandwidth, power usage and transmitter size."
Signal lasers are WORK and EXPENSE. You have to accurately track your target both for transmission and reception. Far, far more expense than cubesats justify.
Maybe one day it will be cheap and easy. Not today.
Huh? No, I'm not the one who is wrong here.
The more focused your "lens", the tighter your aim must be. And my whole point was the expense of accurate aiming equipment.
Fine, use a parabolic dish for your RADIO. But a pinpoint laser, today, is about the LEAST cost-effective solution you could come up with for cheap satellites.
Don't take my word for it. Try it.
The problem with that is cubesats get launched piggy-backed on Air Force satellites; and they can't give you particularly accurate orbital dynamics. It's hard enough to get a signal using the 433 Mhz band where you really only have to know the position of the cubesat to within a few degrees. To use a laser for communication, you would have to know the position to within a tiny fraction of an arc-second.
First line of the article: "Mylar-based attennae could inflate once launched, withstand micro-meteor threat, MIT says."
Article says it can take a number of micrometeor impacts and still stay inflated. I buy that claim. It doesn't take a lot of gas pressure to inflate a piece of mylar and they have a good mechanism for maintaining that modest gas pressure (via sublimation of a particular powdered chemical) even in the presence of a bunch of micrometeor holes (low pressure gas doesn't leak out very quickly).
OTOH, they might have a problem controlling inflation of the antenna in the first place. The sublimation triggers in the presence of vacuum. And they'll have that condition before the cubesat leaves the payload shroud.
the autopilot [/airplane]
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