Present and future feed systems for ESA Deep Space Antennas

Abstract

In the last 15 years the European Space Agency (ESA) has deployed three Deep Space stations that are located in New Norcia (Australia), Cebreros (Spain) and Malargue (Argentina). These ground stations are currently in use to support ESA Deep Space Missions and to provide cross-support to other Space Agencies. This paper presents the feed systems installed in ESA Deep Space Antennas and associated performance. In view of new missions currently in preparation, ESA Deep Space Antennas will undergo in the next years to major upgrades required to accommodate new frequency bands (26 GHz down-link and 34 GHz uplink) and higher transmitted power (up to 100 kW in X-Band) and to improve down-link performance. This paper presents the architecture currently under definition for the new generation of feed systems to be deployed in the network.