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Interplanetary Radar - Track Orbiting Objects

New NASA radar technique finds lost lunar spacecraft

A new technological application of interplanetary radar has successfully located spacecraft orbiting the moon -- one active, and one dormant. This new technique could assist planners of future moon missions. Ref. Source 5g.

Image from NASA of DSS-14 is NASA's 70-meter (230-foot) antenna.

Objects Orbiting Track Radar Interplanetary

We are already tracking thousands of orbiting junk, satellites and other things around us. Tracking further out to include left junk around the moon means we are getting better at tracking. Now we need to get robots or things in near earth orbits to help collect and clean up a lot of the useless junk to make our near earth orbits cleaner.

Interplanetary Radar - Track Orbiting Objects UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

Yeah, we track a lot of it but we miss a lot more. Heck, some of the stuff out there is very small, like the size of a nut and bolt. But these things are moving very fast, and if they were to hit something, like the space station, they could puncture it to catastrophic effect.

Objects Orbiting Track Radar Interplanetary

Yes that is why we need something up there collecting and removing these potential hazards to other satellites and rockets or other space vehicles coming up from and going back down to the planet.

Objects Orbiting Track Radar Interplanetary

This is great news! However, I imagine setting up radar stations on the moon could do much of the same work, at a greater expense, of course.

If we can get such high resolutions at that distance, we could clear out all the small debris on irregular orbits in between here and the moon.

Interplanetary Radar - Track Orbiting Objects

Yeah, and we better hurry up and get this done or we're going to have a catastrophe. I imagine a space based laser would be able to fix this. Unfortunately, I think we'd weaponized something like that and use it to fight our wars more cleanly… so we end up having more wars.