Northrop Grumman’s [NOC] Astro Aerospace successfully completed a critical design review of its AstroMesh radar antenna reflector for use on a future satellite project between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Northrop Grumman said on Monday.
Astro Aerospace will now begin the build phase of its radar antenna reflector for the joint NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite project, which is scheduled to launch in 2021.
The NISAR satellite will be the first radar imaging satellite to utilize dual L-band and S-band frequencies to collect detailed views of land surface changes.
NASA-ISRO will utilize Astro Aerospace’s radar antenna reflector, designed to be ultra-lightweight, for the NISAR’s aperture antenna. Astro Aerospace first received the contract to utilize its mesh reflector in October 2015.
“We are very proud to support NASA and the NISAR program on this important Earth science program. Successful achievement of this design maturity milestone is a great example of the strong partnership with the NASA JPL team,” Michael Cross, Astro Aerospace general manager, said in a statement.
Astro Aerospace’s reflector is built to be well-suited for high frequency communications and complex radar applications.
“The AstroMesh performance record is unmatched with its reflectors deploying successfully on-orbit without incident or failure,” Northrop Grumman said in a statement.
Northrop Grumman previously received a contract to supply the AstroMesh antenna for NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite.