NASA does not stop working, although their primary mission is to study space, to do this they usually need to take on a lot of projects that end up being not just useful for them, but fairly interesting for the rest of humanity. Their latest development could help, not just with space exploration, but also with aviation in general since it is a super-lightweight antenna that could actually be built into the body of an aircraft.
One of the biggest problems aircrafts encounter when you try to add things to them is drag. By hugging the aircraft, this new antenna will have less drag, better performance, and a sleeker look for things like drones and maybe even future flying vehicles. NASA was able to do this thanks to “aerogel” which is not a material we use on a daily basis. It is one of the lightest solid materials out there made up of mostly air (about 95%), with the rest made from a special kind of flexible, high-performance plastic. It is also highly malleable, and it can feel as soft as plastic wrap or as tough as plexiglass.
Stephanie Vivod, a chemical engineer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, put it simply “By removing the liquid portion of a gel, you’re left with this incredibly porous structure. If you’ve ever made Jell-O, you’ve performed chemistry that’s similar to the first step of making an aerogel.”
How NASA created the antenna thanks to aerogel
Since NASA created this material, they have been turning it into useful products, like this antenna. They have done so by layering the aerogel between a small circuit board and copper rings, which act as the antenna’s array, and then sealing it with a special insulating film. This has created what is now known as an active phased array aerogel antenna, which just means that it can direct its signals electronically without having to move physically, making it more reliable and efficient, especially for aircraft with limited room or power.
Since it sits flat against the aircraft and does not stick out and cause drag like traditional antennas, and it also reduces the chance of signal interference thanks to its adjustable elements.
This new technology was tested in the summer of 2024, when a rigid prototype of the antenna was installed on a Britten-Norman Defender plane in partnership with the U.S. Navy. The test flight took place at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland and later more trials were performed, although this time from the ground.
Later on the antenna was mounted on a test platform from a satellite company, Eutelsat America Corp, where it managed to make contact with a Eutelsat satellite way up in geostationary orbit and bounce the signal back to a dish on a NASA building. They also tested it with Kepler’s network of low Earth orbit satellites, showing the antenna could handle connections with both types of systems.
Bryan Schoenholz, another researcher at NASA Glenn explained the importance of these tests “This is significant because we are able to use the same antenna to connect with two very different satellite systems.” This also showed that the aerogel antenna could be reliable in the real world, where planes often need to bounce signals through satellites to reach ground stations and not just be a theoretical concept.
The next step for NASA is to build and test a flexible version of the antenna that could be molded to even more complex surfaces, making it a better fit for the advanced air vehicles of tomorrow. As Schoenholz continues “If an autonomous air taxi or drone flight loses its communications link, we have a very unsafe situation. We can’t afford a ‘dropped call’ up there because that connection is critical to the safety of the flight.”