Comments on: The Benac Orbit, Kepler’s Follow On

By: John Benac

John Benac — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:42:10 +0000

I would explain it, but Google does a better job. Basically, If I take a reading at 1 second and a reading at 2 seconds in a different location, I combine the readings as if I had twice the measurement instruments. If what you are looking at doesn’t change with time, then this works.

So if you combine the readings of a satellite as it passes over the crater and combine them all, it would be as if you has a linear array of antennas that were as long as the path that the satellite flew on. At least that is my understanding of the technology.

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:40:29 +0000

Right. Space time adaptive processing….

By: John Benac

John Benac — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:07:28 +0000

Well, a dish is “smooth” as far as the electromagnetic radiation is concerned as long as the disturbances are smaller than half the wavelength that you are using the dish for.

Also, a rough crater that has only 10 percent of it’s surface reflecting back toward the feed but is 200 times bigger than a conventional dish will still get you more photons, which is what it all comes down to in the end.

So a rough crater on Ceres, with it’s topography understood, can be a dish when raytracing, space time adaptive processing (STAP), and interferometry is used with an array of feed elements whose geometry is also known.

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 04:38:24 +0000

I had a sketchy idea a while back that you use a farside Lunar Impact Crater for radio astronomy. This is already analyzed but uses an expensive and currently impossible “tarp” across the crater. I was thinking a “Peace Symbol” of three strips of “vitrified” Lunar soil could be created from crater rim to interior (I thought lenses NASA knows a microwave rover)…
It was pointed out, not very conclusively, the crater curvature isn’t homogenous or shaped right to make this work. If that is true long radiowaves are picky, wouldn’t the roughness of Ceres’s surface ruin this concept? Or does all the water overcome this? Or was a satellite team member BS-ing me and radiowave aren’t picky?

As an aside if you are doing a google search about why a cloud satellite named CERES was cancelled/postponed, it is really hard when there is an asteroid and another satellite mission with the same name. Lots of 5 letter words out there.

By: Darnell Clayton

Darnell Clayton — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:12:39 +0000

Heh! That is a very interesting view of Ceres! I always saw it as a launching pad for mining the asteroid belt (since we assume it has water within it, which could make it “livable”).

Perhaps it could also serve as a communications hub as well.

By: The 94th Carnival of Space - Out of the Cradle

The 94th Carnival of Space - Out of the Cradle — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:03:47 +0000

[...] for a huge dish to listen in on the extrasolar planets to be found by the Kepler mission in ‘The Benac Orbit, Kepler’s Follow On‘. Paul at the Meridiani Journal gives us a unique view of the launch of the Kepler mission in [...]