reflectarray tagged posts

RainCube, due to fly in 2017, forced JPL’s engineers to get creative in order to squeeze an antenna into a CubeSat. Credit: Tyvak/Jonathan Sauder/NASA/JPL-Caltech Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-black-magic-earth-space.html#jCp

Black magic. That’s what radiofrequency engineers call the mysterious forces guiding communications over the air. These forces involve complex physics and are difficult enough to master on Earth. They only get more baffling when you’re beaming signals into space.Until now, the shape of choice for casting this “magic” has been the parabolic dish. The bigger the antenna dish, the better it is at “catching” or transmitting signals from far away. But CubeSats are changing that...