Watching asteroids: new radar system: (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 21, 2023, 23:08 (642 days ago) @ David Turell

Just started:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-space-radar-will-hunt-planet-threatening...

"A new tool promises to ramp up this brand of science by offering more detailed astronomical radar capabilities than ever before. The team behind a pioneering radar system at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia released their first results last month at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, revealing unprecedented detail on the moon and detecting a near-Earth asteroid. The telescope’s novel radar system, called Next Generation Radar (ngRADAR), “produced results that were beyond expectations,” says Flora Paganelli, a project scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO’s) radar division.

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"The ngRADAR system uses the Green Bank Telescope as a huge transmitting antenna, and it uses the Very Long Baseline Array of radio telescopes spread across the U.S., Hawaii and the Virgin Islands as a miles-wide receiver. Green Bank has a 100-meter-diameter dish—a radio telescope’s equivalent of a mirror—making it the largest steerable antenna on Earth, uniquely suited to this job.

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"Tracking asteroids is great fun for planetary scientists, who scour these chunks of rock for clues to our solar system’s past, and it’s also crucial for humanity. The best chance we have of protecting ourselves against Earth-bound asteroids is by detecting them early and learning about their properties, such as their size and density. “The sooner we know about the risk and the more we know about the object, the better we can address the situation,” Taylor says.

"The ngRADAR system is coming online at a particularly critical time for planetary defense and radio astronomy. After the catastrophic collapse of Puerto Rico’s famed Arecibo Observatory, only one other active radar astronomy facility remains: NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar, part of the Deep Space Network, which communicates with spacecraft across the solar system. Putting all of humanity’s eggs in Goldstone’s basket is a particularly risky move, especially because it “recently experienced an 18-month-long failure, leaving us without an essential planetary defense capability for an extended period of time,” says planetary scientist Jean-Luc Margot of the University of California, Los Angeles. The ngRADAR system helps to fill the gap left by Arecibo and complements the existing Goldstone facility, strengthening humanity’s lines of defense.

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"The team also plans to harness the capabilities of the upcoming expansion of the Very Large Array, known as ngVLA, which will make ngRADAR the most sophisticated planetary radar in history over the coming decade. “In this future configuration, the system will exceed Arecibo's sensitivity and allow detections at larger distances,” Margot says."

Comment: dhw will a why God made dangerous asteroids. I don't know but we have the God-give brains to fight them.