[Music]
>>We're developing a conformal antenna.
We're looking to transition off of larger,
traditional antennas that may have a very
large volume and require a gimbal to move
it around to point at different, say, satellites,
for communications.
This particular antenna is a multi-center
collaboration.
It was designed at NASA Glenn in Cleveland,
on-aircraft modeling of the antenna's performance
done at NASA Langley, preflight planning done
at NASA Ames, and then finally we had integration
done at NASA Armstrong.
The antenna is made up of sixty-four little
antennas that combine to perform the function
of a much larger antenna; that allows us to
generate steering of the beam as well as minimize
interference with ground users, to form interesting
pattern characteristics that are hard to obtain
with a traditional antenna.
And making use of this light-weight aerogel
material, this is nearly ninety-five percent
air and allows us to have a very efficient
antenna for generating our communication signals.
[Background noise]
>>It's ready to go.
[Airplane revving up, taking off]
>>Our climb card is complete, setting up for Run
One then.
And turning inbound for the first run, are
you guys ready?
[Background chatter]
>>Copy altitude verified.
[Background chatter]
>>We're actively taking a run which allows us
to measure the antenna pattern characteristics
so that we can verify that the antenna is
functioning correctly but also see how much
interference that this is causing for ground-based
systems.
