TK has designed, built and measured the performance of a quasi-optical antenna for NASA Goddard's Ice-cloud Radiometer instrument - PolSIR. 'The PolSIR instrument – short for Polarized Submillimeter Ice-cloud Radiometer – will help humanity better understand Earth’s dynamic atmosphere and its impact on climate by studying ice clouds that form at high altitudes throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions. Specifically, identical pairs of the radiometers (325 and 680 GHz) will fly aboard two CubeSats' Source: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/instruments/polsir The antenna combines two frequency bands centred on 325 GHz and 684 GHz, using a dichroic filter, with very low losses - bette...
...has arrived in TK - via a rather tortuous process to move it though our clean room, but has halved the surface roughness we can obtain on wire spark erosion - down to 0.2 mm Ra in Aluminium: very important in setting the ohmic losses found in our mm-wave waveguides.
TK designed and built - for AIRBUS in Germany - the feed optics and multiplexer as well as the transmitted power monitoring of JAXA's 94 GHz Doppler radar now flying on the EarthCARE (Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer) mission - well over a decade ago. The hardware is now, at last, in polar orbit. And NiCT/JAXA have now released "First-Light" images of the Dopplar radar in action The sample cloud was observed over the Pacific Ocean, just east of Japan, on 13 June 2024. The BBC's Jonathan Amos published a useful article on the need for these measurements and JAXA's Youtube video can be seen here, TK design and made, along with the mutiplexer, the secondary mirror seen abo...
NASA has kindly provided a nice visual display of TROPICS constellation moving over the earth - TK made the TROPICS antennas. Worth a look at this fun NASA site with TROPICS 5 featured here:
Based on a contract initially signed on the 9th September 2015, TK has shipped out to AIRBUS in Portsmouth thelast piece of MetOP-SG hardware - a spare MicroWaves Sounder On-Board Calibration Target. Thanks to all of our colleagues - both current and past - in both TK, Atkins, Cardiff University and our customersin AIRBUS UK and Spain - as well as in ESA - for coping with the ups and sometimes downs of such a challenging and rewarding set of projects. the OBCT being packed up in TK's TVAC clean room after final PRT calibration.
Another two TROPICS radiometers were launched on the 26th May - details are here - and the Youtube video here and are - to quote - the PI, Bill Blackwell ....."all four are working great!" At 2 am BST, Monday 8th May 2023, the New Zealand launch of two TROPICS radiometers puts TK designed, made and tested antennas into orbit to observe hurricanes. Rocket Labs' Electron engine powers the initial part of the launch: Credit:Rocket Labs Click here to watch the launch on YouTube - and a splendid Drone video here ....the 100mm cube tri-band antennas use a polarizing grid to combine co-aligned beams covering atmospheric rotation lines of water and oxygen: ...