Evolutionary design of an X-band antenna for NASA's Space Technology 5 mission

Abstract

We present an evolved X-band antenna design and flight prototype currently on schedule to be deployed on NASA's Space Technology 5 spacecraft in late 2004. The antenna was evolved to meet a challenging set of mission requirements, most notably the combination of wide beamwidth for a circularly polarized wave and wide bandwidth. The highest performance antenna found using a genetic algorithm was fabricated and tested.