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KSAT and Safran to explore new antenna technology

KSAT partners with Safran to investigate multiple-mission and multiple-beam active electronically scanning antenna ground stations to address the increasing need of ground station capacity for LEO satellites.

The partnership was agreed on at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Dubai.

 – With the increasing conjunction of satellite contacts at polar stations, the possibility of tracking multiple missions with a single system definitely makes sense. We are very pleased to work with KSAT to leverage this technology for unlocking this bottleneck, Alex Thily, Senior VP Sales and Marketing at Safran says.

While traditional gimbaled reflector antennas can only support a single LEO satellite at a time, the new technology is foreseen to provide multiple beams out of one antenna structure.

– The challenge is to provide an antenna performance equal to reflector antennas in order to allow seamless integration of the new technology into the ground station network without changing quality of service, Hennes Henniger, director Optical Solutions at KSAT says.