Large Deployable-Mesh Antenna System for Ocean Salinity and Soil Moisture Sensing1

Abstract-A concept has been studied for remote sensing o f sea surface salinity and soil moisture fiom space using a large deployable mesh antenna system. The antenna has a 6-m-diameter of€kt-fed parabolic reflector with multichannel feedhorns operating at L and S bands. The antenna boresight is o&et from nadir and the entire system rotates about the nadir axis, providing a conical scan with high-precision measurements across a wide swath at a spatial resolution o f about 40 km fiom a 600-km orbit altitude. The study includes evaluation of deployable mesh antennas nd preferred antenna, spacecraft, and l unch vehicle configurations. Designs for compact, lightweight feedhorns and radiometerhdar electronics are being developed and evaluated. Laboratory measurements of the emissivity o f mesh samples under simulated orbital conditions are bein