"Students Develop Innovative Beach Ball Antenna for Cubesat Communication Testing"
Students at the University of Arizona have developed a cubesat called CatSat with an inflatable antenna that will increase downlink speeds for high-speed, low-cost space communication and data transmission for small satellites. The beach ball antenna will inflate using a combination of helium and argon once in Earth orbit. CatSat will also study Earth's ionosphere and send down high-resolution images of our planet at speeds previously unobtainable by comparably sized cubesats. The technology demonstrated by CatSat opens the door to the possibility of future lunar, planetary, and deep-space missions using cubesats.