[NLRS] EME anniversary (1946) -- "Birth of radio astronomy"
Bill Davis
cqbilld at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 10 11:02:42 EST 2019
"Welcome to "On This Day ... in Space!" where we peer back in our archives to find historic moments in spaceflight and astronomy. So enjoy a blast from the past with Space.com's Hanneke Weitering to look back at what happened on this day in space!
On January 10, 1946, the U.S. Army bounced radar signals off of Earth's moon for the first time ever. Known as "Project Diana," this was the first experiment in radio astronomy.
Researchers set up a large transmitter, receiver and antenna at a laboratory at the U.S. Army Signal Corps' Fort Monmouth in New Jersey and blasted short radio pulses in the direction of the moon. Then 2.5 seconds later, the reflected radio signals were detected. So it took 2.5 seconds for the radio waves to make the 477,000-mile round trip to and from the moon.
With this successful experiment, Project Diana marked the birth of radio astronomy.
"
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