Into space: Solid-state power amplifiers aid space exploration

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Into space: Solid-state power amplifiers aid space exploration [Copy link]

December 14, 2021 Watching stars rotate and exploring the surface of the Apollo 15 landing site up close are just two examples of research made possible by the Green Bank Telescope. This blog post explores Qorvo technologies that are helping accelerate space exploration.

Atop the radio-silent hills of West Virginia stands a dazzling, star-gazing giant: the Green Bank Telescope, or GBT.

GBT is the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, and has been used by more than 900 scientists over the past five years. Why? Because GBT is extremely accurate and versatile.

The receivers cover frequencies from 100 MHz to 100 GHz, and its processor can spot nanosecond time differences in the data, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). It can also access 85% of local celestial objects. Its surface (2.3 acres) is so smooth that the noise level is 260 microns (5 hairs).

You can observe in true radio silence. It's located in the Green Bank Observatory Radio Quiet Zone, which detects weak radio frequency signals that might be masked by man-made signals. The observatory borders a national forest, and the Allegheny Mountains protect it from some radio interference.

△ Centaurus A photographed and processed by Skynet Junior Scholar member Surfer9

The amount of knowledge that GBT has helped scientists gain so far is astronomical. With about 6,500 hours of observations per year, the results are used in fields such as chemistry, physics, radar reception and astronomy. Most notably, some discoveries made by studying the large mass and short rotation period of pulsars have helped to prove Einstein's theory of general relativity. A pulsar is a neutron star, which is the dense core of a supermassive star that exploded. In 2006, GBT detected the largest neutron star ever discovered.

Another leap forward in space exploration

Scientific discoveries often drive technological advances, and vice versa, achieving a cross-fertilization of science and technology. In the case of GBT, advances in RF technology are helping to push the limits of space exploration.

Real-time example: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S) are currently working together on a project to improve the capabilities of planetary radars to enable earlier and more accurate analysis of targeted near-Earth objects (NEOs). NRAO used the RI&S radar to make the first observation transmission from the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

The test captured detailed images of the Apollo 15 lunar landing site using a transmitter mounted on the Green Bank Telescope. The 700-watt 13-16 GHz SSPA, the RF transmitter at the heart of this technology milestone, provided the necessary power to achieve this technological milestone. Until now, conventional radars have not been able to identify and characterize small NEOs like Spatium can.

△ The 2.3-acre dish surface of the Green Bank Telescope is a giant container that can be used to capture weak radio waves from celestial bodies in space.

△ This is a RI&S radar image of the Apollo 15 landing area in 1971. This photo shows a celestial body with a diameter of only 5 meters.

"Our first radar study with Raytheon characterized the Moon in unexpected ways, and this upcoming study is expected to characterize near-Earth objects," said Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and vice president of radio astronomy at Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI). "Every milestone we achieve in this and other research and technology collaborations will help improve our research by enabling the next generation of radio telescopes and observations."

This new capability could pave the way for exploring other planets and objects in the solar system without having to launch additional space probes or satellites. Since the 1950s, we have sent many strong radar signals from Earth into space, which have been reflected off objects in the solar system. Using the Green Coast Telescope and Spatium as transmitters will increase scientists' ability to explore the solar system using radar and ground-based instruments.

Qorvo in Space

Space is no stranger to Qorvo technology. For 25 years, Qorvo has also worked with its partners to advance planetary exploration and has “launched” more than 1 million components into space. Here are a few examples:

Speaking of Mars rovers, Qorvo technology has been instrumental in the landing of Curiosity on Mars in 2012. Officials at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed that in 2020, Mars Perseverance’s critical landing radar system integrated a Qorvo product, which was a component of the “sky crane” that helped the rover land.

On January 19, 2006, NASA successfully launched New Horizons to Pluto using Jupiter's gravity, and then took the spacecraft to nearly 3 billion miles beyond Pluto to explore the icy bodies of the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons used Qorvo technology to return the images it collected to Earth.

NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers were equipped with Qorvo GaAs amplifiers. The rovers arrived on Mars in 2004, and thanks to a combination of superior design and interplanetary devices, Spirit continued to operate and communicate with Earth until 2010. Its sister rover, Opportunity, continued to operate well until 2018, sending a wealth of data to scientists around the world.

Qorvo products played a role in the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft that landed on Saturn in 1997. The Cassini-Huygens probe contained critical equipment designed to communicate with the spacecraft during its mission on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. Qorvo's gallium arsenide (GaAs) technology was key to sending the results back to Earth.