Over the past few years, radio astronomers at the Green Bank Telescope developed a prototype system using radar to capture images of distant objects in the Solar System, such as planets, the Moon, asteroids and comets, including those that could be dangerous to us. This prototype managed to capture high-resolution images of the Moon.
In 2021, images of the Moon focus on the Hadley region on the near side of the Moon, which was the site of the Apollo 15 landing. So, the latest images of the Moon this time focus on the Tycho crater, which was captured at a resolution of 5 meters.
Quoted from IFL Science, this is the highest-resolution image of the Moon's surface captured from Earth, and reveals new details about the region.
This project is a collaboration between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), and Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RIS). The current version uses a low-power radar transmitter of up to 700 watts output at 13.9 gigahertz.
Radio waves bounce off the surface of the Moon, then bounce back. These waves are then collected by ten 25 meter antennas from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).
"It's amazing what we've been able to capture so far, using less power than typical equipment," Patrick Taylor, head of the radar division for the GBO and NRAO, said in a statement.
The full version will have 500 kilowatts of power and will use not only the VLBA but also the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). This capacity is almost 1,000 times the output power. This capacity will be able to detect, track, and determine the properties of dangerous asteroids.
"In our test, we were able to target an asteroid that is 2.1 million kilometers away from us, more than 5 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. The asteroid is about one kilometer in size, large enough to cause Earth destruction in the event of an impact," Taylor said.
"With a high power system, we can study more objects further. In terms of developing a strategy for a possible impact, the system has more time to give a warning," he added.
The next step of the research is to develop a medium-power radar transmitter of at least 10 kilowatts, about 14 times as powerful as current types. This will help refine the observation strategy before the final version is implemented.
