NASA New Radar Technique searched Lost Lunar Spacecraft

NASA New Radar Technique searched Lost Lunar Spacecraft

Question: NASA’s JPL has succeeded in locating two lunar spacecraft. One of them is Chandrayaan-1 and the other is…
(a) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
(b) Surveyor 3
(c) Explorer 49
(d) Luna 10
Ans: (a)

  • According to press release by NASA on 9th March, 2017, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA has successfully located spacecraft orbiting the moon — one active, and one dormant.
  • NASA has succeeded in searching its own Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar.
  • JPL’s team used NASA’s 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to send out a powerful beam of microwaves directed toward the moon. Then the radar echoes bounced back from lunar orbit were received by the 100-meter (330-foot) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
  • Its notable that Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is very small, a cube about five feet (1.5 meters) on each side — about half the size of a smart car. Although the interplanetary radar has been used to observe small asteroids several million miles from Earth, researchers were not certain that an object of this smaller size as far away as the moon could be detected, even with the world’s most powerful radars.
  • Chandrayaan-1 proved the perfect target for demonstrating the capability of this technique.
  • This new technique could assist planners of future moon missions.

Reference:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6769