Design, Build and Fly: NASA Lockheed P-3 Orion with External Antenna Fairings

摘要

A suite of snow and ice penetrating radar arrays, used for polar remote sensing, have been developed by a team of University of Kansas and DARcorporation engineers in support of the NASA Operation Ice-Bridge program. This collaborative industry/academic partnership provided design, analysis, fabrication and testing of antenna fairings for the above mentioned radar array, as well as subsequent installation and flight testing on a Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft. This installation has since flown multiple successful missions, generating in excess of 150TB of snow and ice data. This paper discusses the effect of the antennas on the aerodynamics, and performance, as well as the structure and manufacturing of the pylons and the antenna fairings.