tu/epRomanian student Niels Vertigal dreams of looking at the origin of the universe. To this end, he has developed an inflatable radio telescope that will soon be able to peer into the depths of space beyond the Moon, far from terrestrial noise. The antenna was tested in England at an altitude of 30 km.
“Every gram that goes into space is valuable,” Vertigal says a week before departure. “So the question is how to make an antenna that is large in space, but very small and light when launched.”
Hence his idea of making an inflatable antenna. “In a vacuum, you only need a small amount of air to blow something.” To test this, he went to England with a prototype antenna Sent into space Specializes in conducting and supervising these types of experiments.
small box
When “released,” the antenna is packed into a small cube measuring 10x10x10 centimetres. It contains a thin layer of wafer that extends to an area of one square metre. On the film is a 2-micrometer conductive layer of copper, which acts as a radio receiver. Folding is accomplished by inflating the antenna arms with a small amount of compressed air, followed by a small dose of carbon dioxide2.
Satisfied
During the experiment, it turned out that the antenna opened completely, but later than Vertigal expected. “I still have to analyze the data, but I have already seen that the antenna works,” he said after a day of testing. “Anyway, I’m satisfied with the way things turned out.”
Vertigal wants to prove through his experiment that the inflatable antenna concept works. “I really hope that space missions to the moon will adopt this idea next,” he says.
cooperation
There is a collaboration involving Radboud University Nijmegen and TU/e, among others, which wants to submit a proposal to the European Space Agency (Esa). The goal is to use an inflatable antenna as a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon. “By using an antenna that can pick up very low frequencies behind the Moon, far from interference from Earth, we expect to receive information about the beginning of the universe,” says Vertigal.
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