Asteroid 'Fly-By' Will Produce Radio Echoes

By Doug Lung
published


An asteroid that's approximately 400-meters diameter--Asteroid 2005 YU55--will pass within 0.85 lunar distances from Earth on Nov. 8, 2011 and scientists will be bouncing signals off of it to obtain high resolution images as fine as two meters-per-pixel. With the right equipment, it should be possible to hear these echoes when the asteroid is in view.

Image credit: NASA/Cornell/Arecibo The Southgate Amateur Radio Club Website has details on receiving opportunities. It says that because YU55 will be so close to Earth, the radar echoes should be detectable with antennas as small as one meter.

Two frequencies of the frequencies that will be used are 2380 MHz and 8560 MHz. The 2380 MHz signal will be a continuous wave transmitted from Arecibo Observatory (and set to precisely that frequency at the Green Bank Telescope operation) on Nov. 9, 2011 from 19:15-19:30 UTC. Due to Doppler shift, the received frequency will vary by as much as 2 kHz. The 8560 MHz signal will be transmitted from the Goldstone Deep Space Network facility between 01:30 and 02:00 UTC on Nov. 9, 2011. Observers may see that frequency shifted by as much as 6 kHz.

I wonder if YU55 will also reflect the signal from the Air Force Surveillance Radar. If so, echoes from it would be heard on www.spaceweatherradio.com.

Look for more details on this as the YU55 gets closer.

Doug Lung
Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.