Picture of the Day: Oxford Space Systems’ Wrapped Rib antenna
It will be a payload for the up coming era of significant-efficiency low-charge Earth Observation radar tiny satellite missions, they say.
Specially, it is a Cassegrain reflector antenna with a steel mesh surface area regarded as the “Wrapped Rib” antenna, a 3m diameter parabolic reflector which stows into a small quantity. This makes the architecture appropriate with ~150kg spacecraft.
Functioning at substantial frequency, the Wrapped Rib antenna is created for small-price tag, significant resolution SAR missions applying SSTL’s CarbSAR system. In accordance to the corporations, the project properly shown deployment of the most important reflector ribs and secondary reflector mast with a subsequent RF examination of the system’s general performance.

SAR data
Apparently commercial demands for surveillance, modify detection and “big data” analytics purposes are driving curiosity in spaceborne SAR knowledge – to help working day/evening and all-weather imaging at a charge quicker than what can be attained with any particular person satellite. In turn, this drives desire for considerably smaller sized radar satellites that can be introduced within just a constrained start volume in teams, but it is still appealing to keep a substantial antenna for far better good quality imagery…
“SSTL pioneered the growth of modest satellites from the early 80’s combining initiative technologies with a various strategy enabling smallsat missions,” explained the Chief Know-how Officer of SSTL, Andrew Haslehurst.
“Embedding the SAR electronics instantly into our main avionics simplifies the architecture, put together with the outstanding stowage volume of the Wrapped Rib has enabled SSTL to build a very able CarbSAR products giving large resolution X-band SAR imaging abilities day, night time and no matter what the weather”.
It was developed with the support of a funding grant from the United kingdom Space Agency’s Nationwide Space Technological innovation Programme
“The remarkably revolutionary OSS Wrapped Rib Antenna, put together with SSTL’s electronic and RF electronics, delivers a compact SAR payload for smallsat missions and we are already observing solid global customer desire for this product or service,” included the CEO of Oxford Area Devices, Sean Sutcliffe.
See also: Picture of the Working day: House-certain magnetometer works by using diamond-primarily based quantum technology
It will be a payload for the up coming era of significant-efficiency low-charge Earth Observation radar tiny satellite missions, they say.
Specially, it is a Cassegrain reflector antenna with a steel mesh surface area regarded as the “Wrapped Rib” antenna, a 3m diameter parabolic reflector which stows into a small quantity. This makes the architecture appropriate with ~150kg spacecraft.
Functioning at substantial frequency, the Wrapped Rib antenna is created for small-price tag, significant resolution SAR missions applying SSTL’s CarbSAR system. In accordance to the corporations, the project properly shown deployment of the most important reflector ribs and secondary reflector mast with a subsequent RF examination of the system’s general performance.

SAR data
Apparently commercial demands for surveillance, modify detection and “big data” analytics purposes are driving curiosity in spaceborne SAR knowledge – to help working day/evening and all-weather imaging at a charge quicker than what can be attained with any particular person satellite. In turn, this drives desire for considerably smaller sized radar satellites that can be introduced within just a constrained start volume in teams, but it is still appealing to keep a substantial antenna for far better good quality imagery…
“SSTL pioneered the growth of modest satellites from the early 80’s combining initiative technologies with a various strategy enabling smallsat missions,” explained the Chief Know-how Officer of SSTL, Andrew Haslehurst.
“Embedding the SAR electronics instantly into our main avionics simplifies the architecture, put together with the outstanding stowage volume of the Wrapped Rib has enabled SSTL to build a very able CarbSAR products giving large resolution X-band SAR imaging abilities day, night time and no matter what the weather”.
It was developed with the support of a funding grant from the United kingdom Space Agency’s Nationwide Space Technological innovation Programme
“The remarkably revolutionary OSS Wrapped Rib Antenna, put together with SSTL’s electronic and RF electronics, delivers a compact SAR payload for smallsat missions and we are already observing solid global customer desire for this product or service,” included the CEO of Oxford Area Devices, Sean Sutcliffe.
See also: Picture of the Working day: House-certain magnetometer works by using diamond-primarily based quantum technology