Design and test of a 2m x 4m DART system in the Rf

摘要

A 2-meter by 4-meter aperture DART (dual anamorphic reflector telescope) system has been designed and fabricated using thin stretched mesh reflectors. The system concept consists of a pair of single curvature reflectors with curvature in orthogonal directions relative to each other and is being developed for future ultra-lightweight space applications. The current design is an extension of a 1-meter aperture system previously prototyped and successfully tested in the FarIR. The 2m x 4m system is a laboratory prototype with areal density of less than 10kg/m~2 for each reflector. The new design demonstrates the advantageous scaling properties of the single curvature reflector concept. The 2m x 4m system was configured and tested in the RF over several frequencies from 5.8 - 8.2 GHz. This paper documents the structural configuration, test preparation, test results, and analysis correlation. Test results show the DART system to be a high directivity antenna (46.5 dB), very low cross-polarization (-33 dB), and good off-axis properties. Test results were in good agreement with analytical predictions of the performance. Generally, the DART system easily achieves the surface accuracy requirements at 8.2GHz.