Cable Net Design and Form-Finding of Cable and Truss Combined Structures

To commemorate the great contribution of Galileo Galilei in the area of space, NASA launched a Jupiter probe named Galileo on October 11, 1989. The probe is equipped with a camera and a lower gain antenna that can measure Jupiter’s atmospheric, cloud and magnetic information. There are two kinds of spaceborne reflector antennas: axisymmetric (prime-feed) and non-axisymmetric (offset-feed) reflector antennas. The non-axisymmetric reflector antenna is mainly a cutting parabolic antenna. The cutting antenna here is generally not a ground warning or search antenna that is cut by two planes parallel to the axis but an antenna obtained from a cylinder intersecting the axisymmetric reflector. As a result, an elliptical reflector surface is obtained.