Rows upon rows of cobalt-blue spires in Goddard’s antenna chamber evoke a soundproof room from a recording studio. Much like laying down tracks on a hit album, this testing facility ensures clean takes for NASA missions' antennas and their data transmissions.
The ElectroMagnetic Anechoic Chamber, GEMAC for short, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been a critical proving ground for antenna technology for more than half-a-century.On any given day, NASA’s networks may communicate with over 100 space missions. Whether the mission keeps the lines of communication open with orbiting astronauts or peers deep into the cosmos, those dozens of satellites all have one thing in common: each needs an antenna.
Much like laying down tracks on a hit album, errant ambient noise picked up by the microphone can ruin an otherwise perfect take. The same is true with radio waves when engineers want to test a spacecraft antenna. The radio environment on Earth is “noisy”: AM and FM broadcasts, television signals, cell phones, even microwave ovens, all produce radio frequencies – RF.
Trying to do antenna design and testing work without a chamber like this “would be like taking a calculator away from an accountant,” said Goddard engineer Ken Hersey. The Earth Coverage Antenna for NASA’s PACE – the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem missionRadio frequency testing of the PACE Earth Coverage Antenna in the ElectroMagnetic Anechoic Chamber at Goddard Space Flight Center.Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem
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