Southern Hemisphere Asteroid Radar Program (SHARP)

Dr. Shinji Horiuchi
NASA Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC)/ Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation(CSIRO)

Astronomical radar observations have been used to probe surfaces of all the solid planets and many smaller bodies in the solar system. More recently, there has been considerable interest in using radar observations as a technique to characterize near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and determine their orbits more precisely. There is a three-fold motivation for performing radar observations of asteroids. First, asteroids represent primitive remnants of the early solar system and characterization of their properties such as shape, rotation state and existence of satellites can provide insights into their evolution and parent populations. Secondly, precise knowledge of asteroid orbits is essential to assess the extent that they might represent impact hazards to the Earth, and finally, they represent targets for spacecraft, both robotic and crewed. Historically, Goldstone and Arecibo planetary radar capabilities have made significant contributions to tracking many asteroids. However, their coverage has been limited to the northern hemisphere sky and consequently have missed a fraction of NEAs during Earth flybys. To fill the gap, over the past years we have developed and demonstrated a Southern Hemisphere radar capability using the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC), part of the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN), as transmitters and the Parkes 64m Radio Telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) as receivers. By the end of 2023, we've successfully detected a total of 33 Near Earth Asteroids in total since the project started in 2015. We've also observed several space debris and dead satellites, including Halca (Muses-B satellite) made and launched by ISAS/JAXA.

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