CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (NRAO PR) — Recent advancements in 3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing) for metallic structures make it possible to print all-metal electromagnetic devices—like antennas and waveguides—on demand. A new partnership between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Optisys, LLC, headquartered in West Valley City, Utah, will explore the potential for leveraging this technology for radio astronomy applications.

GREENSBORO, NC (Qorvo PR) — Qorvo® (Nasdaq: QRVO), a leading provider of innovative radio frequency (RF) solutions that connect the world, today announced its Spatium® solid-state power amplifier (SSPA) technology will play a key role in a new planetary radar experiment using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Planetary radar is instrumental in characterizing Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) by providing precision measurement of shape, rotation, position, and an estimate of composition.

SEATTLE (NRAO PR) — The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the SETI Institute have agreed to collaborate on a broad range of future scientific and technical projects in radio astronomy and related research. Initial efforts under the agreement will be focused on developing capabilities for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) on radio telescopes operated by NRAO.

The two organizations will collaborate to develop and install a signal processing system on the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) that will analyze data collected by that telescope to identify transmissions possibly generated by extraterrestrial technologies. This system — dubbed COSMIC: the Commensal Open Source Multimode Interferometer Cluster — will receive data from a newly-developed parallel Ethernet interface to the VLA, using the same data stream used for other research but analyzed in parallel by COSMIC.

SEATTLE (NRAO PR) — Emerging technologies and new strategies are opening a revitalized era in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). New discovery capabilities, along with the rapidly-expanding number of known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, are spurring innovative approaches by both government and private organizations, according to a panel of experts speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Washington.

New approaches will not only expand upon but also go beyond the traditional SETI technique of searching for intelligently-generated radio signals, first pioneered by Frank Drake’s Project Ozma in 1960. Scientists now are designing state-of-the-art techniques to detect a variety of signatures that can indicate the possibility of extraterrestrial technologies. Such “technosignatures” can range from the chemical composition of a planet’s atmosphere, to laser emissions, to structures orbiting other stars, among others.

SEATTLE, February 14, 2020 (Breakthrough Initiatives PR) – The Breakthrough Listen Initiative today released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy, the region around its central, 4-million-solar-mass black hole, and observations of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov.

Breakthrough Listen Principal Investigator Andrew Siemion announced the release of the nearly two petabytes of data at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It marks the second “data dump” from the four-year-old, $100M search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) initiative. A first download of a petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released in June 2019, marking the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.

60 Starlink satellites begin to separate after deployment from the Falcon 9 second stage. (Credit: SpaceX webcast)

National Radio Astronomy Observatory Statement

Recent news reports of planned constellations of communication satellites, including the SpaceX Starlink proposal, have pointed out the potential impacts these systems may have on radio astronomy. For decades, the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, have worked to ensure that innovations in communications can advance while still preserving our ability to explore the Universe from Earth and conduct essential fundamental research through radio astronomy.

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