Space Antennas And Deployables
News
Tendeg Selected by Lockheed Martin as Strategic Supplier of Deployable Antennas
April 10, 2023
Tendeg’s 3m aperture reflector with deployable boom and feed assembly is shown on a microsat class satellite bus.
Louisville, CO – Aerospace deployable antenna provider Tendeg LLC is pleased to announce it has been selected by Lockheed Martin as a strategic supplier for several of the company’s critical global security space missions.
Tendeg is an innovative manufacturer of spacecraft antennas and deployable structures with full-range aerospace engineering services, including design, analysis, prototyping and flight unit build. The company’s antennas are scalable to support missions requiring apertures that deploy from .5 meters to further than 16 meters.
Tendeg is supporting several orders with Lockheed Martin being delivered as early as this year. The two firms are also in discussions regarding how Tendeg’s unique designs could further serve our nation’s important space missions when combined with the Lockheed Martin’s versatile radio frequency (RF) payloads. These designs promise to enable the revolutionary path to larger apertures increasing spectral access and mission capability, in all orbital regimes.
“The scalability of our deployable antennas provide a wide range of mission options, and their affordability helps contribute to the low life-cycle cost goals of many government missions,” said Gregg Freebury, CEO and Principal Engineer at Tendeg. “We’re ‘right down the road’ from Lockheed Martin here in Colorado and we’re excited to be able to work closely with them on efforts to support those protecting our country.”
For more information about Tendeg and current projects, please visit www.tendeg.com.
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Tendeg point of contact: Gregg Freebury, gregg@tendeg.com
Tendeg and NASA JPL's Starshade Inner Disk Assembly is Showcased on the Cover of National Geographic Magazine
Feb 1, 2023
Tendeg is excited to be a partner with NASA JPL on the Starshade Technology Development Program that is showcased on the cover of the February 2023 National Geographic magazine.
A NatGeo crew led by photographer Craig Cutler was onsite at Tendeg for a week and captured some stunning images and videos of the Starshade Inner Disk System. Tendeg fabricated the 10 m deployable truss, optical shield assembly and the complex gravity compensating offloading assembly. Tendeg did the final assembly and testing demonstrating 30 micron deployment repeatability.
On the cover are Tendeg employees Seth Hill, Ryan Meschewski, JoAnna Fulton and Amanda Swain. Interior pictures show additional views of the truss. Please visit the NatGeo online site or Craig Cutler's site for additional content showing amazing animations.
📸 @craigcutlerstudio
NASA Selects Tendeg Antennas for New Mission to Study Storms, Impacts on Climate Models
Nov 5, 2021
NASA has selected a new Earth science mission that will study the behavior of tropical storms and thunderstorms, including their impacts on weather and climate models. The mission will be a collection of three SmallSats, flying in tight coordination, called Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS), and is expected to launch in 2027 as part of NASA’s Earth Venture Program.
Tendeg is providing the Integrated Payload Structure and the deployable Ka-band 1.6m reflector that is part of the Dynamic Atmospheric Radar instrument.
NASA JPL RainCube Successfully Deployed
The NASA/JPL KaPDA antenna was successfully deployed and operated in space for the first time recently on the RainCube mission! Tendeg is the exclusive licensee of KaPDA. On this radar mission, the antenna, named KaRPDA for Ka-band Radar Parabolic Deployable Antenna, was deployed on 7/28/2018 at 23:47:50 UTC. It successfully performed at mission parameters, identifying atmospheric water vapor.
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Tendeg antennas made the cover of the March 2018 Small Satellites special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE. The center and left antennas are Tendeg products.
In December 2017 Tendeg succesfully tested their 1 meter RainCube Follow On mission antenna in the JPL Near Field Chamber, demonstrating 49.2 dB gain at 36 GHz (Ka-band) performance.
