On 3/30/21 5:42 PM, Magnus Danielson wrote:
What *is* a challenge (and hasn't really been solved) is how to do
cryogenic feeds in mass production. DSN looked at building an array
of 100 receivers, and nobody would sign up to delivering 100
cryocoolers that would have sufficient MTBF. But transmitting -
that's easy.
In that case the request was not aligned with what industry could
deliver. Sounds like there is room for an advancement program to push
the capability of the industry, so requests like that can be made. Then
that faces challenges to have large enough volume to have multiple
vendor being able to bid on it, and make sure multiple vendors do get bids.
They did all that. Got some prototypes. Cryocoolers of that size are
sort of a specialized thing, apparently. It's probably in some
technical reports from about 15 years ago. JPL did a bunch of
experiments - we temporarily had a couple of 6m and a 12m dish installed
on lab, and I think there was one down on Caltech campus.
Here's a presentation from Sandy Weinreb
https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/seminars/abstracts/viewgraphs/DSN_array_dev_program.pdf
and one from Joe Statman
https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/seminars/abstracts/viewgraphs/DSAN_040729.pdf
If you read them, note the dates for the missions - JWST, Lunar Hab, etc.
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