A leading Chinese university is building an array of more than 20 large radar antennas to track asteroids.
The Beijing Institute of Technology is leading the project. The array aims to bounce signals off asteroids within 93 million miles of Earth to image and track objects and determine if they could impact our planet.
Two antennas have been built at a site in southwest China. According to Science and Technology Daily, the pair is expected to be operational by September.
China will launch a mission to sample asteroids.
There will be more than 20 radar antennas, each with a diameter of up to 98 feet. The system will be the world's farthest-reaching radar system, but few details about the project, such as the wavelength at which it will operate, are available.
The president of the Beijing Institute of Technology told Beijing news outlet Global Times that the project will meet the country's requirements for near-Earth defense and space sensing capability. The system can be used to track satellites and debris in Earth's atmosphere.
In April, the China National Space Administration announced that it is working on a planetary defense plan that includes tracking near- Earth objects and launching an asteroid-deflection test mission in the next few years.
A survey by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that ground-based radar could be used to protect Earth from asteroids.
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