X-Band Antennas for NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) Mission

The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probes (IMAP) is a NASA mission that will launch in 2025. The mission will study the complex dynamics and coupling between the solar wind and the local interstellar medium [1]. The telecommunications system used on the IMAP spacecraft [2] consists of two antennas, pictured in Fig. 1. The antennas are designed to operate over the X-Band frequency assignment for both Near Earth and Deep Space usage, as prescribed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). For the Uplink (UL), the frequency ranges from 7145 to 7235 MHz and for the Downlink (DL), from 8400 to 8500 MHz.