1

Afaik I know there is a radar for observing space debris in Germany though I don't know whether it can scan the whole Earth surroundings or just a segment.

With respect to asteroids, we discover them through optical telescopes, right?

Now I've come across the USS Nimitz accident, where there might be something visible on radar but not visually.

Would such objects move around Earth orbit, what are our capabilities to discover them and what are current limitations?

UPDATE. Follow-up question at Astronomy SE.

J. Doe
  • 2,890
  • 1
  • 14
  • 36
  • 2
    Some links to read: 1, 2, 3, 4. – Uwe Aug 20 '19 at 16:00
  • 1
    Although this is a very interesting question, I suspect that it can't really be answered properly. I'm fairly sure that state-of-the-art space radar capabilities are highly classified. – TooTea Aug 20 '19 at 17:47
  • 1
    @TooTea I think there is still a good answer based on known capabilities of detecting debris in LEO, and certainly there is plenty of scientific results using deep space radar of the planets and asteroids to talk about. – uhoh Aug 20 '19 at 22:39
  • @Uwe so appears like available radar systems are powerful enough to discover more or less remote asteroids. Your data renders my initial assumption that asteroids observations are limited to optical hardware as wrong. Thank you! – J. Doe Aug 21 '19 at 06:40
  • can you explain what you mean re the Nimitz incident - the whole point of radar is to spot things that are not visible... – Rory Alsop Aug 21 '19 at 08:44
  • @RoryAlsop in that accidence radar information from different devices was the only information where you have to exclude human error and software failure. – J. Doe Aug 21 '19 at 08:55

0 Answers0