China To Build A Radar On The MOON As Part Of Plan To Observe The Earth
According to reports CHINA has launched an ambitious plan to build a powerful radar on the moon in order to monitor Earth in more detail than has ever been done before.
China’s ambition in cementing itself as a major player in space exploration has ramped up over the last few years, and the current project in the pipeline is perhaps its most ambitious.
A funding for the project began earlier this year by a group of Chinese scientists and has already garnered 16 million yuan (£1.8m) in funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The facility on our natural satellite would be used for research and defence monitoring and provide the clearest images yet of Earth.
The base could even have living facilities and a powerful radar antenna that would be at least 50 metres tall.
Powerful microwaves emitted from the radar could penetrate the Earth’s surface, allowing scientists to look under the sea and even underground, which could help to predict earthquakes.
However, authorities are deliberating on whether the benefits outweigh the cost.
Professor Zhou Yiguo, a radar technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Electronics, told South China Morning Post: “Either the radar has to be extremely powerful, or the antenna extremely large, otherwise it won’t be able to pick up the radio waves bouncing back from the Earth.
“It is an important subject of research, but whether its advantage over satellite constellations can adjust the high cost and risk will need careful evaluation.”
As the moon is 10 times farther away than any man-made satellites orbiting the Earth, the radar would need an almost unfathomable amount of power, which would mean that a a solar or nuclear power plant would also have to be built on the moon to sustain the technology, according to the project’s team leader Professor Guo Huadong, a radar technology expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The team have been tasked with submitting a report to the government by 2020, when it will be decided whether to press ahead with the scheme.
