Design of a reconfigurable array of monopoles for the Netherlands China Low-frequency Explorer

The Netherlands China Low-frequency Explorer (NCLE) is a scientific payload hosted on the Chang'e 4 relay satellite, part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. It is a pathfinder for a low frequency Moon-based interferometer for frequencies between 80 kHz and 80 MHz. The antenna of NCLE consists of three monopoles with a length of 5 meter. Each pair of monopoles can be configured as a dipole. This will be done in the digital domain. In this paper the design considerations taken into account during the development of the NCLE antenna system will be presented. Furthermore the sensitivity and polarimetric performance achieved over the operating frequency band of the NCLE antenna system are shown and design considerations for future space-based low-frequency radio telescopes will be discussed.