TICRA and European consortium will develop a flight-ready 6 meter deployable reflector antenna

06 Nov 2017

TICRA and a consortium of 15 companies from 6 European countries have won a project to develop a protoflight model (PFM) of a 6 meter deployable reflector antenna, ready for launch from 2021.


The LEA, Large European Antenna, project is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 framework with a total of 5 Million Euro, and it fills a gap in Europe’s space technology portfolio where large deployable reflectors have been missing so far. The technology is of vital importance for future telecommunication, Earth observation and science missions.

During LEA, reflector and boom assembly and all associated joints and mechanisms will be developed and tested, in order to reach TRL 8.

TICRA will provide radio frequency (RF) simulations of the large reflector antenna performance throughout the project. The simulations will be based on a detailed RF-model of the LEA PFM and feed in the GRASP software, which will then be correlated with measured RF-data.

Managing Director at TICRA, Michael Lumholt says “As the world´s leading supplier of accurate reflector antenna modelling software, TICRA is excited to participate in this challenging Horizon 2020 project. Through the close collaboration with experts in Europe, we will gain knowledge of this new reflector technology. This will position TICRA as the preferred partner in the design as well as in the software solutions for future European deployable reflector antennas.”

LEA will be completed in 2020, and the consortium is now looking for a satellite builder or satellite operator to fly the antenna from 2021 at no charge in order to reach in-orbit verification.

Read the full press release.

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