ASTRABEAM LLC — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: S11

Description

The NASA Science Mission Directorate has a critical need for advanced deployable antenna apertures operating at millimeter-wave frequencies from CubeSat platforms. This proposal is to fulfill the technology gap and develop a novel type of ultra-low-loss millimeter-wave metasurfacenbsp;holographic antennas to support a wide range of passive remote sensing applications beyond Ka-band up to 200 GHz. Enabled by a breakthrough dielectric substrate material that is electrically low-loss, thermally high-conductive, and mechanically robust, the proposed holographic antennas will be designed, synthesized, and verified including CubeSat platform effects. Mechanical feasibility, radiometer system architectures, integration with antenna feeds, and fabrication flow will be studied and evaluated in the project. The Phase 1 project goal is to demonstrate the design concept of compact-size, deployable, low-profile, lightweight, easy-to-fabricate and high-performance metasurface antennas, which arenbsp;also cost-effective and can be an excellent fit for NASA remote sensing and other commercial wireless applications.