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Platform one NASA’s four aeronautics research centres have collaborated on the development of a lightweight conformal satellite antenna to boost aircraft and antenna performance (writes Nick Flaherty). The antenna is made from aerogels – very lightweight, flexible conducting polyimide materials that are 90% air – resulting in a thin, flexible antenna with improved gain, bandwidth and efficiency. The active antenna consists of 64 small antennas that are 3.3 mm thick and have a bend radius of 1 m, allowing a large array of 500 elements to be installed on the fuselage of an unmanned aircraft. It has a commercial phased array chipset to enable a small, low weight and power solution for beyond line-of- sight comms on UAVs up to 500 kg. The chipset reduces radio interference to ground stations to address interference concerns as a result of UASs being integrated into the national airspace. The phased array demonstrated the ability to lower side lobes by 20 dB, reducing unintentional radiation from the antenna. The team developed a robotic antenna scanner for testing and verification. This measured the antenna’s pattern characteristics to determine the feasibility of the interference mitigation techniques. The team completed five flight tests including four antenna configurations at various altitudes to demonstrate the reduction of side lobes in the array. The project, called the Conformal Lightweight Antenna Structures for Aeronautical Communications Technologies (CLAS-ACT), was a joint effort by NASA’s Ames and Armstrong Flight Research Centres in California, the Glenn Research Centre in Ohio and the Langley Research Centre in Virginia. Antenna from aerogels Communications The conformal satellite antenna has elements that are 3.3 mm thick and a bend radius of 1 m