NASA's SkyFall Mars Helicopters Will Feature a Revolutionary Antenna Design

• NASA is preparing the SkyFall trio of helicopters to hunt for accessible water beneath the Martian surface.
• The helicopters will utilize flexible, fabric-based ground-penetrating radar antennas to scan for ice in the top few meters of regolith.
• The mission aims to identify shallow ice deposits that satellites cannot resolve, which are vital for future human exploration.

Mission Objectives

• Following the success of the Ingenuity helicopter, SkyFall will fly low to map fine layers where soil meets ice.
• Instruments will operate in an ultra-wide frequency range of 500 to 2,500 MHz to gain both depth and high-resolution surface detail.

Antenna Engineering

• The team selected a miniaturized, curvilinear 'Vivaldi' antenna design, which is flat and flexible enough to bend during landing.
• Construction materials include polyester, Vectran—the same material used for past Mars rover airbags—flexible fiberglass tape springs, and a lightweight magnesium frame.
• The design allows the antenna to spring back into shape for data collection after repeated landings on uneven Martian terrain.

Testing and Development

• Prototypes successfully underwent rigorous testing at JPL's Environmental Test Laboratory, including thermal cycling, structural flexing, and electromagnetic interference trials.
• The hardware demonstrated no signal loss even after 200 simulated landings, doubling the mission's requirements.
• The team is currently building an engineering model for vibration and field testing; the mission is slated for a late 2028 launch aboard the Space Reactor-1 Freedom.