| Subject: Re: Similar programs |
| From: david@djwhome.demon.co.uk (David Woolley) |
| Date: 18/02/2004, 07:39 |
In article <c0uu2b$7tt$1@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>,
"Warlock of Eire" <shaggy_ks@hotmail.com> wrote:
So I guess all I can do is scan the dark nights with my telescope. It would
be really great if the radar data was open for public analyizing.
As NASA funds a lot of it, and is a US governmental body, the data
probably is available, under the US Freedom of Information Act. You will
probably need a US postal address and might need to be a US citizen, to
obtain it by that route.
However:
1) They may well not store the detailed raw data, only data reduced for
the purposes of the particular experiment;
2) Planetary radar is generally targetted, and used to refine the information
about an object initially detected by optical means, so is not suitable
for screening searches.
Planetary radar is Doppler compensated so that signals returned from the
intended target fall at a fixed frequency. Objects with different range
rates will be out of the receiver passband and the data will not be captured,
let alone recorded.
Low earth orbit radar observations will be done by the military and
not be generally available.