3 ms·
If anyone is curious, as I was, about the large red shapes on the map, those are the beams of the object tracking/measurement sites. They correlate with the map
by theideaofcoffee 1y ago
If anyone is curious, as I was, about the large red shapes on the map, those are the beams of the object tracking/measurement sites. They correlate with the maps at [0]. I was actually pretty blown away when I started reading that page. Apparently those stations can measure <10cm-sized debrisin orbit. What?! Amazing.
[0] https://leolabs.space/radars/ https://leolabs.space/radars/
- dguest 1y agoThere are "beams" and "instruments". Does anyone know what the distinction is?
- tj_astro 1y agoThe instrument is the particular radar. They usually have two at each location. Each radar is essentially a linear phased array that creates multiple possible beam locations in the radar plane. They light up a beam as a satellite passes through in order to collect measurements. TLDR an instrument has multiple beams.
- dguest 1y agoOk so there should be "beams" coming from each "instrument"? I didn't see that, but some of the sites are inactive at the moment.