Coffee talks
Friday 20/09/2024 @ 11:50, Sala riunioni quarto piano e on line (meet.google.com/sue-bwvk-axf)
Giuseppe Pupillo (INAF-IRA), "Radar observations of asteroids with the INAF radio telescopes"
Radar observations of near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are invaluable for scientific research, planetary defense and space mission support. In 2019, the European Space Agency (ESA) started the project "NEO Observation Concepts for Radar Systems" involving INAF-IRA and INAF-OAC. Successfully concluded in 2022, this project comprised a pilot study and test campaigns to evaluate the feasibility of a European radar system dedicated to NEO observation. We outline the main activities carried out during and in the wake of this project, also presenting some results from radar observations of 2021 AF8 and (4660) Nereus, using the INAF antennas as receivers and the JPL/NASA facility in Goldstone (DSS14) as transmitter. We then focus on the test observations of the potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 LW3, carried out using the JPL/DSN antenna DSS63 in Madrid as transmitter and the Effelsberg and Medicina "Grueff" radio telescopes. This marked the first NEO observation performed by a radar system fully based in the EU. Both the radio telescopes successfully detected the radar echo, resolving it in the frequency domain. These measurements enabled us to derive important physical properties of the target and to confirm its binary nature.