When a baseball pitcher throws a fastball, the speed pops up on the jumbotron thanks to radar. The technology is also useful for air traffic control, highway speed traps and weather forecasting—and it’s not reserved for Earth. Astronomers have used radar to probe the planets and asteroids around us, measuring their speed as they whiz around the sun and imaging the details of their surface. A new tool promises to ramp up this brand of science by offering more detailed astronomical radar capabilities than ever before. The team behind a pioneering radar system at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia released their first results last month at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, revealing unprecedented detail on the moon and detecting a near-Earth asteroid. The telescope’s novel radar system, called Next Generation Radar (ngRADAR), “produced results that were beyond expectations,” says Flora Paganelli, a project scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO’s) radar division.
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