A powerful new radar technology to reveal the secrets of the Solar System

A powerful new radar technology to reveal the secrets of the Solar System

The Green Bank Observatory, the largest fully orientable radio telescope in the world, was equipped at the end of 2020 with new technology developed by Raytheon Intelligence & Space and GBO, which allows it to transmit a radar signal into space. Using the GBT and antennas from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), several tests have been conducted since, focusing on the Moon's surface, including Tycho Crater and NASA's Apollo landing sites.

La The resolution of the new Tycho crater image is close to five meters by five meters and contains about 1.4 billion pixels. The image covers an area of ​​200 km by 175 km, ensuring that the scientists and engineers involved capture the entire crater, which measures 86 km in diameter. "This is the largest synthetic aperture radar image we have produced to date with the help of our Raytheon partners," said Dr Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and vice president of radio astronomy at Associated Universities. Inc. (AUI). “While more work awaits us to improve these images, we are thrilled to share this incredible image with the public and look forward to sharing more images of this project in the near future.”

These promising first results have garnered support for the project from the scientific community, and at the end of September the collaboration received $ 4.5 million in funding from the National Science Foundation to design ways in which the project could be extended.

“After these projects, if we can attract the full support of funding, we will be able to build a system hundreds of times more powerful than the current one and use it to explore the Solar System,” said Beasley. "Such a new system would open a window to the Universe, allowing us to see our neighboring planets and celestial objects in a completely new way".