Ensiklopedia Dunia

Technopedia Center

Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science
S1 Informatics S1 Information Systems S1 Information Technology S1 Computer Engineering S1 Electrical Engineering S1 Civil Engineering

faculty of Economics and Business
S1 Management S1 Accountancy

Faculty of Letters and Educational Sciences
S1 English literature S1 English language education S1 Mathematics education S1 Sports Education

ALTAIR (Radar) - Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ARPA Long-Range Tracking And Instrumentation Radar (ALTAIR)^[1]
Cassegrain antenna of ALTAIR
Country of origin	US
Designer	MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Introduced	1969
Frequency	162 and 422 mc
PRF	300 pps
Beamwidth	1.1° (UHF) 2.8° (VHF)
Pulsewidth	80 µsec
Range	42,000 km
Diameter	45.7 m (150 ft)
Precision	20 m (66 ft)
Power	5 MW

ALTAIR (ARPA Long-Range Tracking And Instrumentation Radar) is a radar tracking station on Roi-Namur island in the north part of the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands. It is a high-sensitivity, wide-bandwidth, coherent, instrumentation and tracking radar that is capable of collecting precise measurements on small targets at long-ranges. ALTAIR supports several operating modes, including tracking and signature collection at VHF and UHF. It is part of a network of contributing radar sensors that perform deep-space tracking.^[2]

The antenna uses a steerable 150-ft dish (46-m-diameter) and employs a focal point VHF feed and multimode Cassegrain UHF feed in conjunction with a frequency selective sub-reflector (5.5 m diameter).^[3]

The radar became operational in 1969.^[4] The original task was to detect and track intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is currently used to measure satellite orbits and meteor echoes in low-Earth orbit,^[5] and to observe ionospheric irregularities and background densities.^[6]

References

^ J. A. Nelson and K. R. Roth, History of Lincoln Laboratory at the Reagan Test Site, Lincoln Laboratory Journal Number 2 2012 (online PDF)
^ Card Index of Radar Sets in Radartutorial
^ S. Close, S. M. Hunt, F. M. McKeen and M. J. Minardi: “Characterization of Leonid meteor head echo data collected using the VHF-UHF Advanced Research Projects Agency Long-Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar (ALTAIR)”, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Massachusetts, USA, in RADIO SCIENCE, VOL. 37, NO. 1, 1009, 10.1029/2000RS002602, 2002 (online PDF)
^ Sidney G. Reed, Richard H. Van Atta und Seymour J. Deitchman DARPA technical accomplishments : an historical review of selected DARPA projects, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, Va. und [1990-1991]
^ Sigrid Close et al.: “Simultaneous dual-frequency observations of meteor head echoes using ALTAIR”, In: Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Space Debris, 19–21 March 2001, Darmstadt, Germany. Ed.: Huguette Sawaya-Lacoste. ESA SP-473, Vol. 1, Noordwijk, Netherlands: ESA Publications Division, ISBN 92-9092-733-X, 2001, p. 237 - 242 (online PDF)
^ D.M.Towle: "VHF and UHF radar observations of equatorial F region ionospheric irregularities and background densities", Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lexington, Massachusetts 02173, in Radio Science 1980, p. 71 ([1])

This article incorporates text available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

Category:

Military radars of the United States

Hidden category:

Articles with imported Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 text