FPD'17

D3P5 - TRP - Innovative Scalable Large Deployable Antenna Reflector - HPS (Germany) & LSS GmbH (Germany)

16 Feb 2017, 12:00

40m

Newton 1 & 2 (ESA/ESTEC)

Speakers

Dr Leri Datashvili (Large Space Structures GmbH)Mr Paolo Proietti Zolla (HPS GmbH)

Description

The need for Large Reflector Antennas is not a new one, and has been addressed since the very beginning of space communication. The demand for ever bigger apertures is, and will be, always present throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, including optical and high energy devices, as it is the most effective way to observe or process faint sources or operate with lower power consumption and focalize energy on wanted areas without disturbing or being disturbed by the surrounding areas. The maximum launcher payload fairing with a diameter up to a little bit more than 5 meters allows launching antennas as big as 4 m to 6 m by wing folding artifices or elliptical rim profile. Furthermore large launchers are very expensive and the commercial satellite industry is very sensitive to the envelope volume of the satellite in launch configuration. Considering also payload restrictions led to the development of alternative concepts, which became known as “Large Deployable Antennas” or LDAs. They utilize different means of stowing and unfolding a bigger than 4 m antenna structure and make it that way compatible with standard launchers. From the European point of view there is currently a dependence of USA industry as large deployable reflectors are not available from European suppliers. The applications range for reflectors for telecommunication, Earth observation as well as science missions. One of ESA’s initiated studies was the “SCALABLE” (Innovative Scalable Large Deployable Antenna Reflectors) project which is led by HPS GmbH responsible for the antenna subsystem and the metallic mesh with subcontract mainly to Large Space Structures (LSS) responsible for the reflector assembly development. The objective of this project was to identify, design and demonstrate the mechanical feasibility of a European large antenna reflector dish having intrinsic scaling capability to cover 4 m to 18 m projected aperture diameter and frequency range from UHF to Ka-band. As a proof of concept, a deployable engineering model with 5 m projected aperture diameter was developed, manufactured and tested under ambient conditions.

Short Speaker Information

Mr. Proietti Zolla works at HPS since Summer 2011 and was before the mechanical responsible for the Alphasat TDP5 Q/V band antennas and for the development of the passive units/horns for the TDP5 Payload including design, manufacturing and interfaces verification, thermo-structural analysis, configuration manager, and procurement. In the mechanism field he was responsible for the mechanical design of an on-board tunable channel filter in Ku-Band (ESA contract ARTES 5). For the RESTEO study he has performed the multibody analysis (kinematic and dynamic) of all the deployment phases of a large deployable reflector. Since June 2013 he is Section Head of the "Project Management and System Engineering" at HPS and since April 2016 Section Head for Antennas & Structures and has been in addition e.g. Technical Officer and/or Project Manager on several antenna development projects (Q/V Band Feeder Link Antenna – FLANT; Ultra Rapid Deployable Antenna – URDA; Innovative Scalable Large Deployable Antenna Reflector – SCALABLE; Antenna For Gnss Based Orbit Determination System - SUGA…). Currently he is the system Engineer for the Phase B2, C/D for the K-Band High Gain Antenna Reflector Assembly (ARA) onboard EUCLID.

CV - Dr. Leri Datashvili
Leri.Datashvili@largespace.de
+49 89 3609 0101

From January 1986 till April 2002, he has been working at the Georgian Institute for Space Constructions (GISC), Tbilisi. From April 2002 till end of 2015, he has been a Senior Research Scientist and a Space Structures Group Leader at LLB, TUM. He gave lectures in "Membrane Structures" from 2009 to 2015 at TUM.
Since Jan. 1, 2016 he is a CEO & Chief Designer of the Large Space Structures GmbH (LSS). His research & development areas of interest include LDRs for space applications, membrane structures, high-precision structures, composite materials and structures, flexible shell and morphing skin structures, multilayer sandwich structures, among others, all with design, numerical analyses and experimental investigations.