
In fall 2024, NASA developed and examined a 3D-printed antenna to reveal a low-cost functionality to speak science knowledge to Earth. The antenna, examined in flight utilizing an atmospheric climate balloon, might open the door for utilizing 3D printing as a cheap improvement answer for the ever-increasing variety of science and exploration missions.
For this expertise demonstration, engineers from NASA’s Close to Area Community designed and constructed a 3D-printed antenna, examined it with the community’s relay satellites, after which flew it on a climate balloon.
The 3D printing course of, also called additive manufacturing, creates a bodily object from a digital mannequin by including a number of layers of fabric on high of one another, normally as a liquid, powder, or filament. The majority of the 3D-printed antenna makes use of a low electrical resistance, tunable, ceramic-filled polymer materials.
Utilizing a printer equipped by Fortify, the crew had full management over a number of of the electromagnetic and mechanical properties that normal 3D printing processes don’t. As soon as NASA acquired the printer, this expertise enabled the crew to design and print an antenna for the balloon in a matter of hours. Groups printed the conductive a part of the antenna with one in all a number of totally different conductive ink printers used in the course of the experiment.
For this technology demonstration, the community crew designed and constructed a 3D-printed magneto-electric dipole antenna and flew it on a climate balloon. A dipole antenna is usually utilized in radio and telecommunications. The antenna has two “poles,” making a radiation sample just like a donut form.
Testing
The antenna, a collaboration between engineers inside NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program and the company’s Area Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, was created to showcase the capabilities of low-cost design and manufacturing.
Following manufacturing, the antenna was assembled and examined at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Maryland, within the middle’s electromagnetic anechoic chamber.
The anechoic chamber is the quietest room at Goddard—a shielded area designed and constructed to each resist intrusive electromagnetic waves and suppress their emission to the skin world. This chamber eliminates echoes and reflections of electromagnetic waves to simulate the relative “quiet” of area.
To organize for testing, NASA intern Alex Moricette put in the antenna onto the mast of the anechoic chamber. The antenna improvement crew used the chamber to check its efficiency in a space-like setting and guarantee it functioned as supposed.
As soon as accomplished, NASA antenna engineers performed last area testing at NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, earlier than liftoff.

The crew coordinated hyperlinks with the Close to Area Community’s relay fleet to check the 3D-printed antenna’s skill to ship and obtain knowledge.
The crew monitored efficiency by sending alerts to and from the 3D-printed antenna and the balloon’s deliberate communications system, a typical satellite tv for pc antenna. Each antennas had been examined at numerous angles and elevations. By evaluating the 3D-printed antenna with the usual antenna, they established a baseline for optimum efficiency.
Within the air
Throughout flight, the climate balloon and hosted 3D-printed antenna had been examined for environmental survivability at 100,000 toes and had been safely recovered.
For many years, NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program, managed by NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, has used balloons to hold science payloads into the ambiance. Climate balloons carry devices that measure atmospheric stress, temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and course. The knowledge gathered is transmitted again to a floor station for mission use.
The demonstration revealed the crew’s anticipated outcomes: that with rapid prototyping and manufacturing capabilities of 3D printing technology, NASA can create high-performance communication antennas tailor-made to mission specs quicker than ever earlier than.
Implementing these trendy technological developments is significant for NASA, not solely to scale back prices for legacy platforms but in addition to allow future missions.
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NASA’s 3D-printed antenna takes additive manufacturing to new heights (2025, January 22)
retrieved 22 January 2025
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