LARGE SPHERICAL ANTENNAS FOR AEROSPACE RESEARCH

Abstract

Command and control of deep-space vehicles are contingent on high-gain high-resolution steerable antennas. The beam of a large spherical antenna can be steered simply by moving the feed. Illuminating the reflector with a line source feed corrects for spherical aberration. The primary and secondary patterns of a 10-ft spherical reflector illuminated by an X-band line source showed reasonably good correlation in the H plane. In the E plane, the primary pattern was degraded by a phase error resulting from astigmatism. Conditions of the experiment precluded prediction of the distance the line source would have to be moved to bring the E-plane patterns into focus. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1961
Accession Number
AD0267016

Entities

People

  • Edward E. Altshuler

Organizations

  • Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Antennas
  • Astigmatism
  • Command And Control
  • Deep Space
  • Gain
  • High Gain
  • High Resolution
  • Reflectors
  • Spacecraft
  • Steerable Antennas
  • Vehicles
  • X Band

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.
  • Radar Systems Engineering.
  • Space Exploration and Orbital Mechanics.

Technology Areas

  • Fully Networked C3
  • Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control
  • Space