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[Music]

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>>We're developing a conformal antenna.

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We're looking to transition off of larger,
traditional antennas that may have a very

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large volume and require a gimbal to move
it around to point at different, say, satellites,

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for communications.

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This particular antenna is a multi-center
collaboration.

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It was designed at NASA Glenn in Cleveland,
on-aircraft modeling of the antenna's performance

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done at NASA Langley, preflight planning done
at NASA Ames, and then finally we had integration

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done at NASA Armstrong.

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The antenna is made up of sixty-four little
antennas that combine to perform the function

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of a much larger antenna; that allows us to
generate steering of the beam as well as minimize

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interference with ground users, to form interesting
pattern characteristics that are hard to obtain

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with a traditional antenna.

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And making use of this light-weight aerogel
material, this is nearly ninety-five percent

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air and allows us to have a very efficient
antenna for generating our communication signals.

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[Background noise]

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>>It's ready to go.

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[Airplane revving up, taking off]

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>>Our climb card is complete, setting up for Run
One then.

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And turning inbound for the first run, are
you guys ready?

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[Background chatter]

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>>Copy altitude verified.

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[Background chatter]

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>>We're actively taking a run which allows us
to measure the antenna pattern characteristics

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so that we can verify that the antenna is
functioning correctly but also see how much