A combination 95 GHz radar and 270/560 GHz spectrometer is being built
as a space instrument prototype for probing plumes and jet phenomena in
the solar system. Dubbed GAISR (Gas And Ice Spectrometer/Radar), the
instrument's radar will make simultaneous range/Doppler measureme
...
A combination 95 GHz radar and 270/560 GHz spectrometer is being built
as a space instrument prototype for probing plumes and jet phenomena in
the solar system. Dubbed GAISR (Gas And Ice Spectrometer/Radar), the
instrument's radar will make simultaneous range/Doppler measurements of
0.1-10 mm sized ice and dust particles out to a few km in range, while
its tunable spectrometer will detect the abundance and velocities of
gaseous water and other volatiles. Here we describe how the radar and
spectrometer share a back-end architecture, and present some innovative
elements of GAISR's frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar,
including high-isolation and low-loss transmit/receive duplexing and a
phase-noise-canceling RF architecture.
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