Development of JAXA’s Ka-band Space Communications System for Near-Earth Spacecraft

Abstract

In recent years, the volumes of data collected by Earth observation missions have significantly increased. With the need to speed up transmission of those high-rate mission data from space to ground, JAXA plans to replace X-band with Ka-band for the direct space-toground downlink, for future missions after the Advanced Optical Satellite, to support the high data rate communications. To accommodate the requirement, JAXA has been developing new Ka-band reception capability to enable direct reception of Ka-band radio signals from spacecrafts in the near-Earth regime.