Inflatable Antenna Increases Reach for Small Satellites

Researchers have designed a new kind of antennae that could significantly increase the range of small satellites, known as CubeSats, allowing them to travel much farther in the solar system.

CubeSats are generally the size of a shoebox and represent something of a democratization of space exploration given their inexpensive designs. However, with this small size has come a number of restrictions, including the satellite's communication range as large radio dishes fail to fit on the small probe. The result is a restriction of range, with CubeSats unable to venture beyond orbits below those of most geosynchronous satellites.

To get around this, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed an antenna that inflates in orbit.

Tests of the new design reveal it amplifies radio signals seven times farther than current CubeSat communications, meaning it could effectievly transmit from the Moon.  

"This antenna is one of the cheapest and most economical solutions to the problem of communications." Alessandra Babuscia, who led the research as a postdoc at MIT, said in a statement.

Inflatable antennas are not a new idea, though previous designs have largely focused on large satellites. To make the idea work for CubeSats, the team turned to a sublimating powder to launch the inflation.

"It's almost like magic," Babuscia said. "Once you are in space, the difference in pressure triggers a chemical reaction that makes the powder sublimate from the solid state to the gas state, and that inflates the antenna."

Today Babuscia works for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she is busy refining the design.

"In the end, what's going to make the success of CubeSat communications will be a lot of different ideas, and the ability of engineers to find the right solution for each mission," Babuscia said. "So inflatable antennae could be for a spacecraft going by itself to an asteroid. For another problem, you'd need another solution. But all this research builds a set of options to allow these spacecraft, made directly by universities, to fly in deep space."