This is an obscure type of antenna, called sometimes cigar antenna, that works pretty much like Yagi - most of you will know it as (non-satellite) TV antenna - but instead of rods it has disks. It was used in Lunokhod 1 and 2, Soviet moon rovers launched in 1970 and 1973 respectively

      • skillissuer@lemmy.worldOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        you can think of these disks or rods or whatever (collectively) as a kind of lens that makes signal stick to these elements - but only if it arrives from front. then all that signal falls on an actual radiating element in the back of antenna. this works only for some range of wavelengths - in general, the more volume this kind of antenna occupies, the bigger this range is

        here’s how electric fields look like in yagi antenna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgSstok3Vjc