Researchers found a way to use the radio to prevent man-made space disasters.
"A combination of pop songs, talkback radio and cutting-edge science has enabled Australian astronomers to identify a way to prevent catastrophic, multi-billion dollar space junk collisions," a Curtin University news release news release reported.
The Australian team will use the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope to detect radio waves that reflect off objects orbiting the Earth.
"We have shown that we are able to detect approximately 10 pieces of space junk simultaneously. Over time this means we are in a position to monitor a significant fraction of the space junk that is in Earth orbits," Team leader Professor Steven Tingay, Director of the MWA at Curtin University and Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), said.
This new detection system will help ease scientists' minds, since space debris collisions can cause serious damage to working satellites and other important space objects.
"An early warning system has the potential to protect the billions of dollars' worth of vital infrastructure orbiting the earth but also prevent collisions that will result in even more space debris being generated, such as what happened in the case of the Iridium 33 satellite in 2009," Tingay said.
The findings also helped show the power of the $51 million MWA.
"The MWA was designed to be the most powerful low frequency radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere and this was our chance to test its capabilities," Tingay said. "Prior to undertaking the study we had calculated how strong we expected the signals to be using simulations and theory. The measurements we took as part of the study were spot on in agreement with our calculations."
The researchers got the idea to use MWA to track space junk from a past study by Ben McKinley, a CAASTRO PhD student at The Australian National University. The researcher was able to generate images of the moon using FM signals and even calculated the chances that we could have alien spies listening in.
"CAASTRO's emphasis on all-sky astronomy naturally leads to this new capability with the MWA, showing that astrophysics research can cross over into having significant benefits for people in everyday life," Professor Tingay said.
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