The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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ESA’s (Sub)mm-wave RF Characterization test facility is a quasi-optical free-space RF measurement bench. The properties of test materials is characterized by a single pass through the sample or single reflection on the sample, in transmission and reflection configuration, respectively. In transmission configuration, the field radiated by the transmit horn is collimated by an elliptical mirror and after passing through the sample, it is refocused by a second elliptical mirror to the receive antenna. The transmission performance of the sample is determined by the ratio between the transmission measurement with and without sample. In reflection configuration, the reflectivity is measured via separated transmit and receive ports. The calibration of this set-up requires a high accuracy reflection standard to be placed at the sample position making all subsequent measurements relative to this standard. The reflection standard used is a high purity grade copper sample, machined with high precision diamond cutting, surface roughness 50 nm rms.