It has been announced that a leading Chinese university has begun construction of more than 20 large radar antennas that will be used to track asteroids that may pose a threat to the planet in the future.
A project led by the Beijing Institute of Technology is being dubbed China Fuyan (or the "compound eye") and will soon be completed. With the aim of bouncing signals off asteroids within 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) of Earth (about as distant as the sun), the array is designed to image and track a large number of objects and determine whether or not they might impact our planet in the future.
As of now, two antennas have been constructed at a site in Chongqing, which is located in the southern part of China. It is expected that the pair will be tested and become operational by September, according to a report published first by the Chinese-language publication Science and Technology Daily, which covered the development for the first time.
When completed, the system will have more than 20 radar antennas, each measuring 82 to 98 feet in diameter (25 to 30 meters). Although few facts regarding the project, such as the wavelengths at which it would operate, are known, Chinese press reports suggest that the system will be the world's most distant radar system.
According to Beijing news outlet Global Times, Long Teng, president of the Beijing Institute of Technology, the project will satisfy the nation's needs for near-Earth defense and space sensing capabilities as well as cutting-edge research on the creation of asteroids. The device might be used to track satellites and space junk in Earth orbit.
It was previously reported by Space.com that the Chinese National Space Administration had announced it is working on a planetary defense plan that includes tracking near-Earth objects, as well as launching an asteroid-deflection test mission in the next few years.
According to a new decadal survey released by the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has concluded that ground-based radar might be one of the most effective weapons against asteroids that humanity has to offer to protect Earth from their danger.
China is taking on a more significant role in international efforts to defend against near-Earth asteroids as its space technology has made numerous notable advancements, including successful deep-space exploration to the Moon and Mars as well as those in the sector of manned space programs, observers noted.
