TK has been engaged in the electromagnetic and mechanical design and manufacture of the antenna of TROPICS, a NASA mission using a set of 3U CubeSats with a radiometer payload to observe tropical storms from space.To quote the mission specification: "The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements over the tropics that can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm lifecycle. TROPICS comprises a constellation of CubeSats in three low-Earth o...
Thomas Keating welcomes Zac Freeman to begin his toolmaking apprenticeship. First year training will cover the manufacture of personal equipment using traditional skills to our proven designs dating back to the early 1940's. Setting a CNC milling machine Working on a manual lathe
With the retirement of Maxine Gregory, we welcome to TK and QMC Instruments our new Commercial Manager David Roberts - Commercial Manager With previous experience working within the Rail / Highways and Construction Industries, David has also spent much of his life in Southern Africa. His interests include gardening, DIY, reading fishing. music, Cricket and Rugby.
Working for Elena Saenz of ESA's technical staff, Roger Appleby and Richard Wylde have installed a mm-wave Scatterometer in clean-room facilities in ESTEC in Holland. Designed to measure scattering from both metalic and dielectric materials down to very low levels, the instrument will cover frequencies from W-band to 750 GHz. An Agilent VNA and VDI heads are used to measuring scattered power, with both the incidence and reflected angles determed by precision optics driven by stepping motors. The suble nature of the 125mm split-cube optics was enhanced by calculations performed by Cecilia Cappellin of TICRA, and the software control sysyem developed by Phil Atkin of Pixel An...
The TK designed and built EUMETSAT / ESA / AIRBUS MetOP-SG MWS Quasi-Optics Network Engineering Qualification Model has been completed and will shortly start its electromagnetic testing in specially built facilities in the Physics Department of Cardiff University: The red parts are supporting components... and (when use in a flight model) not destined for Space.... you have to remember toremove them.
TK is proud to have supplied a polarizing grid and an ultragaussian corrugated feed horn for an experimental 425 GHz radiometer now operating in geostationary orbit some 35,786 Km above Indonesia. The radiometer was designed and built by the Shanghai Spaceflight Institute of TT&C and Telecommunication in Shanghai and launched in December 2016 as part of FY4A, a Chinese optical metrological satellite The advanced ultragaussian horn provided very low sidelobe feed to the scanning optics: The designed antenna pattern can be seen below Snippets of the mechanical designs can be seen below