ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO10467
Open Date: 24/07/2020
Closing Date: 04/09/2020 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 20.18I.02
Prog. Ref.: FoundConcept Block 1
Budget Ref.: E/A104-01 – FoundConcept Block 1
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+HU+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+CA+SI
Tender Type: C
Price Range: > 500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / Other
Technology Domains: Electromagnetic Technologies and Techniques / Antennas / Measurement, Characterisation and Calibration Techniques for Radiative Payloads and Antennas / Electromagnetic Technologies and Techniques / Antennas / Millimetre-Wave and Sub-Millimetre-Wave Antenna Front-Ends
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of EO Programmes
Division: Future Missions & Instrument Division
Contract Officer: Tchoualack, Cendrine
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 24/07/2020
Update Reason: Tender issue

Inter-comparison and validation of antenna measurement ranges with dedicated VAlidation STandard (VAST) antennas has been carried out for at least three decades. These activities allow finding and help correcting big and small problems in the measurement procedures, thus leading to an improvement of the measurement accuracy and facilitating better understanding of the measurement techniques. The VAST antenna is designed to have unique electrical characteristics that are well known over a range of frequency bands. To maintain a fair comparison between different measurement ranges, the antenna must be built such that is has excellent mechanical stability over a given operational temperature range with respect to any orientation of the gravity field. To date, two VAST antennas have been produced covering most of the telecom bands up to 50GHz. However, there is now a growing need for high frequency and high accuracy measurements to help support current and future earth observation instruments. This includes instruments on MeOP-SG such as the MicroWave Sounder (MWS) and IceCloud Imager (ICI) which cover a frequencies from 24 to 664GHz. Future proposed missions such as LOCUS have frequency bands in the THz region. Therefore, the main objective of this activity is to design and produce a well-characterised, mechanically and thermally stable multi-frequency reflector VAST antenna for range qualification at sub mm-wave frequencies ((sub)mm-VAST). The feed should consist of six channels covering 89 GHz, 118 GHz, 182 GHz, 325 GHz, 664 GHz and 1.2 THz.