Design and Manufacture of Fan-Fold Deployable Reflector for X-Band Satellite SAR

This paper presents the design and manufacture of a deployable mesh reflector necessary to realize the X-band SAR system for a 200-kg-class satellite. The specifications required for the deployable reflector were defined for the SAR system. A trade-off study of the facet size was performed using FEA to achieve the surface accuracy required by the system. To confirm the feasibility of the surface accuracy estimated by FEA, a 1-m-scale reflector was manufactured to measure the accuracy through ground tests and a microgravity test. After accounting for manufacturing errors, FEA and measurement results showed good agreement. Based on the basic design, a full-scale (3.6 m diameter) deployable reflector was designed and manufactured. A deployment test was conducted to confirm that the structure and mechanism operated properly. To verify the durability in a vibration environment during rocket launch, sinusoidal vibration tests were performed using the full-scale reflector. The tests confirmed sufficient durability for the rocket-launch environment.