Goals & objectives this project aims to develop a new subsystem technology for cubesats. Integrated solar-panel antenna array for cubesats (isaac) is an efficient, compact, high gain, low power…

This federal contract award, with ID NNX15AW41A, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Utah State University (USU) through a Cooperative Agreement. The project, titled "Integrated Solar-Panel Antenna Array for CubeSats (ISAAC)", aims to develop a new subsystem technology for CubeSats - a compact, high-gain, low-power, lightweight X-band antenna array that can be printed directly on the cover glass of solar cells. This will enhance the CubeSat's downlink data rate from 3 Mbps to 50 Mbps, reducing the dependency on complex ground stations and lowering the cost of science missions. The $198,585.75 contract has no set-aside designation, reflecting USU's status as a large public research university with extensive experience supporting federal initiatives, particularly in areas related to its land-grant mission. The project will be validated on an ongoing 6U CubeSat project at USU.

Goals & objectives this project aims to develop a new subsystem technology for cubesats. Integrated solar-panel antenna array for cubesats (isaac) is an efficient, compact, high gain, low power consumption, lightweight, small volume, x-band antenna array with circularly-polarized radiation to support high data rate downlink. The antenna design is optically transparent (will not compete for valuable surface real estate), modular, and is independent from the solar cells. The approach is to design a high gain antenna array with optically transparent elements then print IT with conductive INK directly on to the cover glass of solar cells. We plan to validate isaac on an on-going 6U cubesat project at utah state university. The target design is to fit a near earth network radio, but isaac design will be scalable and can be adapted to space network and deep space network radios. Today's cubesat system uses either UHF or s-band communication systems with only up to 3 mbps downlink. With the proposed xband antenna, the downlink bit rate will be enhanced to 50 mbps with reasonable modulation and coding. Due to its high performance, isaac will play a key role in the link budget and relaxes dependency on complex ground stations, which will consequently reduce the cost of science mission. Although there have been methods to integrate antennas with solar cells, the existing technologies either rely on specially designed solar cells or the antennas are integrated on the backside of the solar panel. Isaac offers the most flexible design as the antenna is independent of the solar cell's size and location, and reduces the spacecraft's payload to the minimum by allowing all off-the-shelf components. Isaac can be integrated directly on top of solar cells as IT is optically transparent, and accordingly opens doors to various missions such as when solar cells are surface-mount, both sides of solar panels are covered with solar cells, and the communication link and the sun are in the same direction.