You’ve probably heard before that the Apollo 11 spacecraft successfully carried humans to the Moon with even less computing power than today’s smartphones. Now, a prototype radar system tested at the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia has taken the most detailed picture of the Moon from Earth using a less powerful transmitter than a microwave oven.
“It’s amazing what we’ve been able to capture so far using less force than a regular household appliance,” said Patrick Taylor, head of the radar division of GBO and NRAO.
The prototype is the result of a collaboration between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Green Bank Observatory (GBO), and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RIS). This collaboration designs a next-generation planetary radar system for GBT that can be used to study celestial bodies in our solar system.
Engineers equipped the GBT with a radar transmitter using 700 watts of power for the regulated test. They aimed the transmitter at the Moon, and the radar echoes were sent back to NRAO’s Very Long Base Order (VLBA), which has 10 antennas in the United States. The result was an extremely detailed image of Tycho Crater with a resolution of 5 meters. This image is the highest resolution image of the Moon ever taken from Earth.
The long-term goal of the project is stated to be to equip the GBT with a 500 kilowatt radar, using the VLBA and its future Next Generation Very Large Order (ngVLA) receiver. With approximately 1,000 times the output power of the prototype transmitter, images obtained will have an even higher resolution.
The team also tested the prototype on a space rock. “In our tests, we were able to focus on an asteroid 2.1 million kilometers from us, which is more than five times the distance between the Earth and the Moon,” Taylor said. big.”
Radar stands out as a critical tool for astronomers who want to precisely map an asteroid’s orbit and assess whether it poses a threat to Earth. “With the high-power system, we can examine more objects much further away,” Patrick says. “Having more warning time is everything when it comes to developing strategies for potential impacts.”
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