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Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) and Penn State developed a breakthrough material that could provide a noticeable improvement in the performance of spacecraft antennas.
The electromagnetic metamaterial is touted by the firm as one of the first that is able to improve a real-world device. A metamaterial contains properties not found in nature, while an electromagnetic metamaterial is designed to “interact with and control the way electromagnetic waves travel, enabling new devices with radically different and improved performance.”
The work was funded by Lockheed Martin’s University Research Initiative Program. The product was conceived by Lockheed’s Dr. Erik Lier.
Metamaterials can save time and potentially make products smaller, both important factors for space-based applications.
“Many experts within government, industry and academia, have had doubts about electromagnetic metamaterials because they were perceived to have narrow bandwidth and high loss,” Lier said. “The results we achieved in this collaborative effort challenged this paradigm, and I think we’ll see customers benefiting from this technology in the near-term.”
