Feed Assembly Development For INCUS 1.6 m Mesh Reflector Antenna

INCUS (INvestigation of Convective UpdraftS) is a NASA Earth Science mission scheduled to launch in 2026. The goal of the mission is to study in detail how water vapor and droplets move inside tropical storms and thunderstorms and understand their effects on weather and climate models. To carry out this study, the mission will use three almost identical SmallSats, each equipped with a Raincube heritage Ka-Band radar. The deployable mesh reflector antenna is a new 1.6 m design provided by Tendeg, which is fed using a seven-horn feed assembly to generate overlapping secondary beams. This paper discusses the approach used to design and fabricate the feed assembly and presents the measured and calculated RF performance parameters.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-03-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.23919/eucap63536.2025.10999839
Primary Topic
Antenna Design and Optimization
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Feed Assembly Development For INCUS 1.6 m Mesh Reflector Antenna

Paolo Focardi, Alessio Mancini, Gaurangi Gupta
Antenna Design and Optimization
article

Feed Assembly Development For INCUS 1.6 m Mesh Reflector Antenna

Paolo Focardi, Alessio Mancini, Gaurangi Gupta
article en

Abstract

INCUS (INvestigation of Convective UpdraftS) is a NASA Earth Science mission scheduled to launch in 2026. The goal of the mission is to study in detail how water vapor and droplets move inside tropical storms and thunderstorms and understand their effects on weather and climate models. To carry out this study, the mission will use three almost identical SmallSats, each equipped with a Raincube heritage Ka-Band radar. The deployable mesh reflector antenna is a new 1.6 m design provided by Tendeg, which is fed using a seven-horn feed assembly to generate overlapping secondary beams. This paper discusses the approach used to design and fabricate the feed assembly and presents the measured and calculated RF performance parameters.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 85%
Antenna Design and Optimization
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