NASA scientists have found Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which was considered lost, by using a new ground-based radar technique.
What is Chandrayaan-1?
Chandrayaan-1 is the India’s first lunar probe.
It was it was launched in October, 2008.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost communication with Chandrayaan-1 in August 2009.
The spacecraft is very small cube about 1.5 meters on each side i.e about half the size of a smart car.
The interplanetary radar has been used to observe small asteroids several million miles from Earth.
But 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.
What NASA did?
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have successfully located ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1.
It was found circling some 200 km above the lunar surface.
They used ground-based radar technology, i.e., sending microwave beams and listening to echoes, to track the lost device orbiting the moon.
The team used NASA’s 70-metre antenna at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to send out a powerful beam of microwaves directed towards the Moon.
Then the radar echoes that bounced back from lunar orbit were received by the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
Not only could they find the spacecraft, they could also determine its speed and orbit.
Nasa has already been using this technology to communicate with Voyager-I spacecraft, which has reached the edge of the solar system.
What is the way ahead?
With companies and countries sending more space missions and satellites into orbits, the technique can help in providing interplanetary radar investigations to ensure that objects don’t collide in space.
Though limited to moon so far, it can perhaps be used in the case of other planets too.
Using ground radars with the ability to track lunar orbits, space travel can become a lot safer.
