Seminar at IAA-CSIC this Friday, 17 July 12:30
Seminarios IAA
IAA Seminar Series
Speaker: Shinji Horiuchi, CSIRO Space & Astronomy/NASA Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
Date: Friday, 17 July, 12:30 CEST
Place: Salón de Actos
Southern Hemisphere Asteroid Radar Program (SHARP)
Precise knowledge of asteroid orbits and properties such as shape, rotation state and existence of satellites is essential to assess the extent that they might represent impact hazards to the Earth, and astronomical radar observations have been used to obtain that. 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, in recent years we have developed and demonstrated the Southern Hemisphere Radar Program (SHARP) capability using the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC), part of the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN), as transmitters and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and Murriyang, the Parkes 64m Radio Telescope, and more recently University of Tasmania radio telescopes such as Ceduna 30-m dish as receivers. From the start of the project in 2015 to early 2026, we have detected a total of 43 near-Earth asteroids.