A gaggle of researchers is making an attempt to bounce radio indicators off a 500-foot-wide asteroid throughout its shut flyby of Earth on Tuesday.

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is aiming its antennas at asteroid 2010 XC15, an area rock that’s categorized as a near-Earth probably hazardous asteroid. The effort is a take a look at run to to arrange for a bigger object, generally known as Apophis, that may have a detailed encounter with our planet in 2029.

“What’s new and what we are trying to do is probe asteroid interiors with long wavelength radars and radio telescopes from the ground,” Mark Haynes, lead investigator on the undertaking and a radar programs engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, stated in a statement. “Longer wavelengths can penetrate the interior of an object much better than the radio wavelengths used for communication.”

HAARP is a analysis facility in Gakona, Alaska (one which’s been the topic of loads of conspiracy theories). It’s made up of 180 high-frequency antennas, every standing at 72 toes tall and stretched throughout 33 acres. The facility transmits radio beams towards the ionosphere, the ionized a part of the ambiance that’s located about 50 to 400 miles (80 to 600 kilometers) above Earth’s floor. HAARP sends radio indicators to the ionosphere and waits to see how they return, in an effort to measure the disturbances attributable to the Sun, amongst different issues.

The facility launched a science marketing campaign in October with 13 experiments, together with one which concerned bouncing indicators off the Moon. At the time, HAARP researchers had been contemplating sending a radio sign to an asteroid to research the inside of the rocky physique.

During right now’s experiment, the HAARP antennas in Alaska will transmit the radio indicators to the asteroid, after which scientists will verify if the mirrored indicators arrive at antenna arrays on the University of New Mexico Long Wavelength Array and California’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array.

HAARP will transmit a frequently chirping sign at barely above and beneath 9.6 megahertz; the chirp will repeat at two-second intervals. At its closest method on December 27, the asteroid can be twice so far as the Moon is from Earth.

Tuesday’s experiment is to arrange for an upcoming encounter with an asteroid in 2029. That probably hazardous asteroid, formally generally known as 99942 Apophis, is round 1,210 toes (370 meters) huge, and it’ll come to inside 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth on April 13, 2029. The near-Earth object was thought to pose a slight danger to Earth in 2068, however NASA ruled that out.

Still, HAARP desires to probe the asteroid to arrange for potential dangers sooner or later from house rocks. “The more time there is before a potential impact, the more options there are to try to deflect it,” Haynes stated.

In September, NASA’s DART spacecraft smacked right into a small asteroid and efficiently altered its orbit. Such a technique may very well be one solution to divert an area rock that threatens Earth.

Today’s take a look at exhibits the potential of utilizing lengthy wavelength radio indicators to probe the interiors of asteroids. “If we can get the ground-based systems up and running, then that will give us a lot of chances to try to do interior sensing of these objects,” Haynes stated.

More: A Powerful Recoil Effect Magnified NASA’s Asteroid Deflection Experiment