Military Satellite Approval For GigaSat FA-240 System

GigaSat FA-240 flyaway systems have recently completed testing and been approved for operation on all DSCS and WGS military X-band satellites. 

Approvals have been given for systems working with either a 400W X-band thread or a 600W quad band (C, X, Ku, Ka) thread.

DSCS certification requires the highest uplink performance and the FA-240 had to undergo extended and very stringent testing with particular attention paid to spurious, phase noise and general interference characteristics.

As well as having to meet tough side lobe and cross pole specifications the antenna was required to track inclined orbit satellites for 24 hours with maximum 0.4dB variation in G/T.

GigaSat Inc President, Greg Wishard commented, "it took a few sleepless nights and it wasn't easy but this approval was necessary to meet the operational requirements of a number of our key customers and opens up doors for us with a number of others".

With the FA-240 already certified for use on Skynet 5, the addition of DSCS and WGS makes this system one of the first, if not the first globally approved 2.4m military flyaway terminal.