Curiosity’s cell phone signal is about to get a whole lot stronger, as a team of UCLA researchers is working on an antenna that would enable Mars rovers to communicate directly with scientists here on Earth, without needing relay satellites to act as an intermediary.

According to Space.com, electrical engineering professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii and his fellow designers have come up with an antenna that would make it possible for robotic rovers to send transmissions directly to NASA personnel on the ground, while also dramatically increasing the window during which data could be relayed to Earth from the Red Planet.

Currently, Curiosity and the other Mars rovers use a technique called indirect communications, which requires them to send their data to a the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s satellite antenna. The MRO then sends the information to Earth at high transmission rates in the X-band, near 8 GHz and with a radio wavelength of about 1.5 inches, the UCLA team explained.

As a result, the rovers can only send information during two 15-minute periods per day because of orbit conditions, they added. By using a new design which combines several smaller antennas into a single, larger one, however, they could drastically increase communication time and make it possible to establish a direct link between the rover and Earth scientists.

Antenna could be ready in time for the Mars 2020 rover

Rahmat-Samii’s team compares their concept to the way that different organs work together in a person’s body. While each organ functions on its own, when it is combined with other organs, it can maintain an entire human being. In a similar way, they look to combine small antennas (also known as antenna elements) into a larger one capable of sending stronger signals.

By piecing together enough of these antenna elements (256 in this case), the UCLA researchers hope to create an array that can not only improve a rover’s ability to send and receive data, but which is compact enough to fit into a limited area onboard the actual rover. They hope to have a lightweight, functional array ready in time for the launch of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.

Rahmat-Samii told Space.com that, based on the relative orbital positions of Earth and Mars, the communication window could be up to “several hours” long, and that it could solve a “potential need for augmented direct-to-Earth (DTE) X-band radio communications,” not just for the Mars 2020 rover but for similar NASA missions in the future.

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Feature Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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