Radio telescopes now being used to monitor space debris

An illustration showing debris around Earth. PIC COURTESY/ESA

Radio telescopes are designed to listen for signals from the stars and from distant galaxies, but scientists are also pointing out that these instruments can also track objects somewhat closer to home: junk in Earth's orbit.

Engineers have used the famed radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in the UK as part of an international plan to watch high-altitude space debris.

Normally, old satellites and bits of spacecraft stuck up in geostationary orbit are too high up for our normal ways of watching space debris.

However, international project Long Baseline Multistatic Radar (LBMR), successfully used a radio telescope to get around this problem.

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