Evolutionary design of a single-wire circularly-polarized X-band antenna for NASA's Space Technology 5 mission

A four-arm symmetric evolved antenna was presented previously to satisfy NASA's Space Technology 5 mission (Lohn, J.D. et al., 2004). However, the mission's launch vehicle was changed, putting it into a much lower Earth orbit, changing the specifications for the communications antenna. Within one month of this change, two new antennas were evolved and prototyped. Both were tested, and both had acceptable performance with respect to the new specifications This rapid response shows that this design process is able to accommodate new requirements quickly.