14 DAY TRIAL // A group of researchers from Australia announces the development of a new method for detecting very dangerous space debris, or space junk, which are pieces of metal, paint or other materials, even satellite and rocket components that orbit Earth at breathtaking speeds.
Astronomers with the Australian Research Council Center for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) and the Curtin University say that their technique can detect radio waves bouncing off tens of thousands of pieces of space junk in low-Earth orbit, by using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).
The MWA is a radio array that has just been opened. It is one of three precursors of the vastly-larger Square Kilometer Array (SKY) radio telescope, which will be inaugurated by the end of the decade. The project is estimated to cost around $2 billion, or nearly 1.5 billion euros, e! Science News reports.
The radio signals that MWA tracks are generated by radio stations located throughout Australia. Needless to say, this approach can be easily scaled to cover the entire world, provided that sufficient radio telescopes are made available to pick up the echoes.