L.Garde Deployable Antennas have been designed, fabricated, tested, and flight demonstrated. These unique structures offer high packaging efficiency and performance. L.Garde antennas offer the potential to package very large apertures in very small volumes. L.Garde has demonstrated numerous examples of these antennas and their capabilities throughout its long history.
The inflatable antenna experiment or IAE flew on STS-77. The structure consisted of a 14 meter diameter inflatable parabolic dish antenna with an inflatable torus perimeter support. Three inflatable struts, each about 33 meters long position the dish antenna away from the Spartan 207 spacecraft.
L.Garde continues to innovate in the area of deployable antenna structures. Several antennas concepts have been designed and built into prototypes including those with surface accuracy allowing it to be useful for Ka transmissions.