News

Haigh-Farr congratulates the teams of NASA and JPL on the successful landing of the Perseverance Rover on Thursday, 18 February, 2021, after travelling 293 million miles from Earth to Mars. 

Haigh-Farr designed, built and delivered the UHF Wraparound™ Antenna to NASA for the Perseverance mission. The antenna, mounted to the parachute cone on the backshell, captured telemetry data during the descent and entry onto Mars.  During the entry, descent and landing (EDL) phase, the Rover traveled at speeds over 12,000 mph, with temperatures around the vehicle reaching 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. 

This is Haigh-Farr’s 5th voyage to Mars – having successfully supported previous Mars missions including Phoenix, Insight, ExoMars and Curiosity.

“We are proud to continue our space heritage with the Mars 2020 mission,” said David Farr, President of Haigh-Farr. “Our antenna system delivers critical data to allow full assessment of all performance parameters achieved during the EDL phase.  We welcome the opportunity to support this mission and, hopefully, many more to come.”

During EDL, Perseverance simultaneously broadcasts a series of tones directly back to Earth confirming the successful completion of a series of tasks along with more complex and complete message sets streaming telemetry to MRO and MAVEN for later transmission back to NASA.  Telemetering real time health and status data throughout critical phases of any mission is an important part of RF operations.  This is even truer when things are taking place nearly 300 million miles from home.

Please visit Haigh-Farr’s website for additional information on the wide variety of antennas we design and build for our customers including our newest technology—an Electronically Steerable Array (ESA) antenna system designed to gather RF energy emitted from multiple sources independently moving throughout complex flight and ground scenarios.