Materials testing in CATR

Candidate coatings for a new space antenna undergoing testing at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands. ESA's antenna test facilites were tasked with evaluating several candidate coatings for the coming MetOp microwave imager. Testing needs to measure the radio frequency behaviour of sample coatings across a very wide range of frequencies, from 18.7 GHz up to a maximum 191.3 GHz. Lower-frequency testing was carried out within the Microwave Material RF Characterization test facility inside the Compact Antenna Test Range, seen here, with higher-frequency testing performed in the (Sub)mm-wave Material RF Characterisation test facility.