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By NASA
4 Min Read NASA 3D-Printed Antenna Takes Additive Manufacturing to New Heights
The 3D-printed antenna mounted to a ladder prior to testing at NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas. Credits: NASA/Peter Moschetti In fall 2024, NASA developed and tested a 3D-printed antenna to demonstrate a low-cost capability to communicate science data to Earth. The antenna, tested in flight using an atmospheric weather balloon, could open the door for using 3D printing as a cost-effective development solution for the ever-increasing number of science and exploration missions.
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NASA developed and tested a 3D-printed antenna to demonstrate a low-cost capability to communicate science data to Earth.NASA/Kasey Dillahay Printing
For this technology demonstration, engineers from NASA’s Near Space Network designed and built a 3D-printed antenna, tested it with the network’s relay satellites, and then flew it on a weather balloon.
The 3D printing process, also known as additive manufacturing, creates a physical object from a digital model by adding multiple layers of material on top of each other, usually as a liquid, powder, or filament. The bulk of the 3D-printed antenna uses a low electrical resistance, tunable, ceramic-filled polymer material.
Using a printer supplied by Fortify, the team had full control over several of the electromagnetic and mechanical properties that standard 3D printing processes do not. Once NASA acquired the printer, this technology enabled the team to design and print an antenna for the balloon in a matter of hours. Teams printed the conductive part of the antenna with one of several different conductive ink printers used during the experiment.
For this technology demonstration, the network team designed and built a 3D-printed magneto-electric dipole antenna and flew it on a weather balloon. [JF1] A dipole antenna is commonly used in radio and telecommunications. The antenna has two “poles,” creating a radiation pattern similar to a donut shape.
Testing
The antenna, a collaboration between engineers within NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program and the agency’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, was created to showcase the capabilities of low-cost design and manufacturing.
Following manufacturing, the antenna was assembled and tested at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in the center’s electromagnetic anechoic chamber.
The anechoic chamber is the quietest room at Goddard — a shielded space designed and constructed to both resist intrusive electromagnetic waves and suppress their emission to the outside world. This chamber eliminates echoes and reflections of electromagnetic waves to simulate the relative “quiet” of space.
To prepare for testing, NASA intern Alex Moricette installed the antenna onto the mast of the anechoic chamber. The antenna development team used the chamber to test its performance in a space-like environment and ensure it functioned as intended.
NASA Goddard’s anechoic chamber eliminates echoes and reflections of electromagnetic waves to simulate the relative “quiet” of space. Here, the antenna is installed on the mast of the anechoic chamber.NASA/Peter Moschetti Once completed, NASA antenna engineers conducted final field testing at NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, before liftoff.
The team coordinated links with the Near Space Network’s relay fleet to test the 3D-printed antenna’s ability to send and receive data.
The team monitored performance by sending signals to and from the 3D-printed antenna and the balloon’s planned communications system, a standard satellite antenna. Both antennas were tested at various angles and elevations. By comparing the 3D-printed antenna with the standard antenna, they established a baseline for optimal performance.
Field testing was performed at NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, prior to liftoff. To do this, the 3D-printed antenna was mounted to a ladder.NASA/Peter Moschetti In the Air
During flight, the weather balloon and hosted 3D-printed antenna were tested for environmental survivability at 100,000 feet and were safely recovered.
For decades, NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program, managed by NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, has used balloons to carry science payloads into the atmosphere. Weather balloons carry instruments that measure atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed, and direction. The information gathered is transmitted back to a ground station for mission use.
The demonstration revealed the team’s anticipated results: that with rapid prototyping and production capabilities of 3D printing technology, NASA can create high-performance communication antennas tailored to mission specifications faster than ever before.
Implementing these modern technological advancements is vital for NASA, not only to reduce costs for legacy platforms but also to enable future missions.
The Near Space Network is funded by NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) program office at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The network is operated out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
By Kendall Murphy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
About the Author
Kendall Murphy
Technical WriterKendall Murphy is a technical writer for the Space Communications and Navigation program office. She specializes in internal and external engagement, educating readers about space communications and navigation technology.
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Last Updated Jan 22, 2025 EditorGoddard Digital TeamContactKendall Murphykendall.t.murphy@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Manufacturing, Materials, 3-D Printing Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Balloons Space Communications & Navigation Program Space Communications Technology Technology Explore More
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By European Space Agency
A study using data from ESA’s Swarm mission suggests that faint magnetic signatures created by Earth’s tides can help us determine magma distribution under the seabed and could even give us insights into long-term trends in global ocean temperatures and salinity.
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By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA Marshall will hold a candle-lighting ceremony and wreath placement at 9:30 a.m. CST. The ceremony will include remarks from Larry Leopard, associate director, and Bill Hill, director of Marshall’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. NASA/ Krisdon Manecke NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, invites media to attend its observance of the agency’s Day of Remembrance at 9:30 a.m. CST Thursday, Jan. 23, in the lobby of Building 4221.
Day of Remembrance honors the members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery.
The event will include brief remarks from NASA Marshall leaders, followed by a candle lighting and moment of silence for the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Speakers will include:
Larry Leopard, associate director, technical. Bill Hill, director, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. Media interested in attending the event must confirm by 12 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 22, with Molly Porter at: molly.a.porter@nasa.gov.
The agency will also pay tribute to its fallen astronauts with special online content, updated on NASA’s Day of Remembrance, at:
https://www.nasa.gov/dor/
Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-424-5158
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 21, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayContactMolly Portermolly.a.porter@nasa.govLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
On Jan. 19, 1965, Gemini 2 successfully completed the second of two uncrewed test flights of the spacecraft and its Titan II booster, clearing the way for the first crewed mission. The 18-minute suborbital mission achieved the primary goals of flight qualifying the Gemini spacecraft, especially its heat shield during a stressful reentry. Recovery forces retrieved the capsule following its splashdown, allowing engineers to evaluate how its systems fared during the flight. The success of Gemini 2 enabled the first crewed mission to fly two months later, beginning a series of 10 flights over the following 20 months. The astronauts who flew these missions demonstrated the rendezvous and docking techniques necessary to implement the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method NASA chose for the Moon landing mission. They also proved that astronauts could work outside their spacecraft during spacewalks and that spacecraft and astronauts could function for at least eight days, the minimum time for a roundtrip lunar mission. The Gemini program proved critical to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the 1960s.
Cutaway diagram of the Gemini spacecraft. Workers at Launch Pad 19 lift Gemini 2 to mate it with its Titan II rocket. At Pad 19, engineers verify the flight simulators inside Gemini 2. Following the success of Gemini 1 in April 1964, NASA had hoped to fly the second mission before the end of the year and the first crewed mission by January 1965. The two stages of the Titan II rocket arrived at Cape Kennedy from the Martin Marietta factory in Baltimore on July 11, and workers erected it on Launch Pad 19 five days later. A lightning strike at the pad on Aug. 17 invalidated all previous testing and required replacement of some pad equipment. A series of three hurricanes in August and September forced workers to partially or totally unstack the vehicle before stacking it for the final time on Sept. 14. The Gemini 2 spacecraft arrived at Cape Kennedy from its builder, the McDonnell Company in St. Louis, on Sept. 21, and workers hoisted it to the top of the Titan II on Oct. 18. Technical issues delayed the spacecraft’s physical mating to the rocket until Nov. 5. These accumulated delays pushed the launch date back to Dec. 9.
The launch abort on Dec. 9, 1964. Liftoff of Gemini 2 from Launch Pad 19 on Jan. 19, 1965. Engineers in the blockhouse monitor the progress of the Titan II during the ascent. Fueling of the rocket began late on Dec. 8, and following three brief holds in the countdown, the Titan’s two first stage engines ignited at 11:41 a.m. EST on Dec. 9. and promptly shut down one second later. Engineers later determined that a cracked valve resulted in loss of hydraulic pressure, causing the malfunction detection system to switch to its backup mode, forcing a shutdown of the engines. Repairs meant a delay into the new year. On Jan. 19, 1965, following a mostly smooth countdown, Gemini 2 lifted off from Pad 19 at 9:04 a.m. EST.
The Mission Control Center (MCC) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the MCC, astronauts Eugene Cernan, left, Walter Schirra, Gordon Cooper, Donald “Deke” Slayton, and Virgil “Gus” Grissom monitor the Gemini 2 flight. In the Gemini Mission Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Flight Director Christopher C. Kraft led a team of flight controllers that monitored all aspects of the flight. At the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, a team of controllers led by Flight Director John Hodge passively monitored the flight from the newly built Mission Control Center. They would act as observers for this flight and Gemini 3, the first crewed mission, before taking over full control with Gemini IV, and control all subsequent American human spaceflights. The Titan rocket’s two stages placed Gemini 2 into a suborbital trajectory, reaching a maximum altitude of 98.9 miles, with the vehicle attaining a maximum velocity of 16,709 miles per hour. Within a minute after separating from the Titan’s second stage, Gemini 2 executed a maneuver to orient its heat shield in the direction of flight to prepare for reentry. Flight simulators installed where the astronauts normally would sit controlled the maneuvers. About seven minutes after liftoff, Gemini 2 jettisoned its equipment section, followed by firing of the retrorockets, and then separation of the retrorocket section, exposing the spacecraft’s heat shield.
View from a camera mounted on a cockpit window during Gemini 2’s reentry. View from the cockpit window during Gemini 2’s descent on its parachute. Gemini 2 then began its reentry, the heat shield protecting the spacecraft from the 2,000-degree heat generated by friction with the Earth’s upper atmosphere. A pilot parachute pulled away the rendezvous and recovery section. At 10,000 feet, the main parachute deployed, and Gemini 2 descended to a splashdown 2,127 miles from its launch pad, after a flight of 18 minutes 16 seconds. The splashdown took place in the Atlantic Ocean about 800 miles east of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and 25 miles from the prime recovery ship, the U.S.S. Lake Champlain (CVS-39).
A U.S. Navy helicopter hovers over the Gemini 2 capsule following its splashdown as a diver jumps into the water. Sailors hoist Gemini 2 aboard the U.S.S. Lake Champlain. U.S. Navy helicopters delivered divers to the splashdown area, who installed a flotation collar around the spacecraft. The Lake Champlain pulled alongside, and sailors hoisted the capsule onto the carrier, securing it on deck one hour forty minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft appeared to be in good condition and arrived back at Cape Kennedy on Jan. 22 for a thorough inspection. As an added bonus, sailors recovered the rendezvous and recovery section. Astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom, whom along with John Young NASA had selected to fly the first crewed Gemini mission, said after the splashdown, “We now see the road clear to our flight, and we’re looking forward to it.” Flight Director Kraft called it “very successful.” Gemini Program Manager Charles Matthews predicted the first crewed mission could occur within three months. Gemini 3 actually launched on March 23.
Enjoy this NASA video of the Gemini 2 mission.
Postscript
The Gemini-B capsule and a Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) mockup atop a Titan-IIIC rocket in 1966. The flown Gemini-B capsule on display at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum in Florida. Former MOL and NASA astronaut Robert Crippen stands beside the only flown Gemini-B capsule – note the hatch in the heat shield at top. Gemini 2 not only cleared the way for the first crewed Gemini mission and the rest of the program, it also took on a second life as a test vehicle for the U.S. Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). The Air Force modified the spacecraft, including cutting a hatch through its heat shield, renamed it Gemini-B, and launched it on Nov. 3, 1966, atop a Titan IIIC rocket. The test flight successfully demonstrated the hatch in the heat shield design during the capsule’s reentry after a 33-minute suborbital flight. Recovery forces retrieved the Gemini-B capsule in the South Atlantic Ocean and returned it to the Air Force for postflight inspection. This marked the only repeat flight of an American spacecraft intended for human spaceflight until the advent of the space shuttle. Visitors can view Gemini 2/Gemini-B on display at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum.
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By NASA
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used radar data taken by ESA’s Sentinel-1A satellite before and after the 2015 eruption of the Calbuco volcano in Chile to create this inter-ferogram showing land deformation. The color bands west of the volcano indicate land sinking. NISAR will produce similar images.ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech A SAR image — like ones NISAR will produce — shows land cover on Mount Okmok on Alaska’s Umnak Island . Created with data taken in August 2011 by NASA’s UAVSAR instrument, it is an example of polarimetry, which measures return waves’ orientation relative to that of transmitted signals.NASA/JPL-Caltech Data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which launched in 1989, was used to create this image of Crater Isabella, a 108-mile-wide (175-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Venus’ surface. NISAR will use the same basic SAR principles to measure properties and characteristics of Earth’s solid surfaces.NASA/JPL-Caltech Set to launch within a few months, NISAR will use a technique called synthetic aperture radar to produce incredibly detailed maps of surface change on our planet.
When NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) new Earth satellite NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) launches in coming months, it will capture images of Earth’s surface so detailed they will show how much small plots of land and ice are moving, down to fractions of an inch. Imaging nearly all of Earth’s solid surfaces twice every 12 days, it will see the flex of Earth’s crust before and after natural disasters such as earthquakes; it will monitor the motion of glaciers and ice sheets; and it will track ecosystem changes, including forest growth and deforestation.
The mission’s extraordinary capabilities come from the technique noted in its name: synthetic aperture radar, or SAR. Pioneered by NASA for use in space, SAR combines multiple measurements, taken as a radar flies overhead, to sharpen the scene below. It works like conventional radar, which uses microwaves to detect distant surfaces and objects, but steps up the data processing to reveal properties and characteristics at high resolution.
To get such detail without SAR, radar satellites would need antennas too enormous to launch, much less operate. At 39 feet (12 meters) wide when deployed, NISAR’s radar antenna reflector is as wide as a city bus is long. Yet it would have to be 12 miles (19 kilometers) in diameter for the mission’s L-band instrument, using traditional radar techniques, to image pixels of Earth down to 30 feet (10 meters) across.
Synthetic aperture radar “allows us to refine things very accurately,” said Charles Elachi, who led NASA spaceborne SAR missions before serving as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 2001 to 2016. “The NISAR mission will open a whole new realm to learn about our planet as a dynamic system.”
Data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which launched in 1989, was used to create this image of Crater Isabella, a 108-mile-wide (175-kilometer-wide) impact crater on Venus’ surface. NISAR will use the same basic SAR principles to measure properties and characteristics of Earth’s solid surfaces.NASA/JPL-Caltech How SAR Works
Elachi arrived at JPL in 1971 after graduating from Caltech, joining a group of engineers developing a radar to study Venus’ surface. Then, as now, radar’s allure was simple: It could collect measurements day and night and see through clouds. The team’s work led to the Magellan mission to Venus in 1989 and several NASA space shuttle radar missions.
An orbiting radar operates on the same principles as one tracking planes at an airport. The spaceborne antenna emits microwave pulses toward Earth. When the pulses hit something — a volcanic cone, for example — they scatter. The antenna receives those signals that echo back to the instrument, which measures their strength, change in frequency, how long they took to return, and if they bounced off of multiple surfaces, such as buildings.
This information can help detect the presence of an object or surface, its distance away, and its speed, but the resolution is too low to generate a clear picture. First conceived at Goodyear Aircraft Corp. in 1952, SAR addresses that issue.
“It’s a technique to create high-resolution images from a low-resolution system,” said Paul Rosen, NISAR’s project scientist at JPL.
As the radar travels, its antenna continuously transmits microwaves and receives echoes from the surface. Because the instrument is moving relative to Earth, there are slight changes in frequency in the return signals. Called the Doppler shift, it’s the same effect that causes a siren’s pitch to rise as a fire engine approaches then fall as it departs.
Computer processing of those signals is like a camera lens redirecting and focusing light to produce a sharp photograph. With SAR, the spacecraft’s path forms the “lens,” and the processing adjusts for the Doppler shifts, allowing the echoes to be aggregated into a single, focused image.
Using SAR
One type of SAR-based visualization is an interferogram, a composite of two images taken at separate times that reveals the differences by measuring the change in the delay of echoes. Though they may look like modern art to the untrained eye, the multicolor concentric bands of interferograms show how far land surfaces have moved: The closer the bands, the greater the motion. Seismologists use these visualizations to measure land deformation from earthquakes.
Another type of SAR analysis, called polarimetry, measures the vertical or horizontal orientation of return waves relative to that of transmitted signals. Waves bouncing off linear structures like buildings tend to return in the same orientation, while those bouncing off irregular features, like tree canopies, return in another orientation. By mapping the differences and the strength of the return signals, researchers can identify an area’s land cover, which is useful for studying deforestation and flooding.
Such analyses are examples of ways NISAR will help researchers better understand processes that affect billions of lives.
“This mission packs in a wide range of science toward a common goal of studying our changing planet and the impacts of natural hazards,” said Deepak Putrevu, co-lead of the ISRO science team at the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, India.
Learn more about NISAR at:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jan 21, 2025 Related Terms
NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth Earth Science Earth Science Division Jet Propulsion Laboratory Explore More
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