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Solar power plant repurposed to hunt asteroids at night
To keep solar power stations from getting lazy, Sandia National Laboratories scientist John Sandusky is looking to give heliostat mirrors a side hustle. At the National Solar Thermal Test Facility he's experimenting with getting them to hunt for asteroids at night.
To keep solar power stations from getting lazy, Sandia National Laboratories scientist John Sandusky is looking to give heliostat mirrors a side hustle. This energy amounted to only a femtowatt of power, but by oscillating the heliostat back and forth over a one-minute cycle, he created conditions suitable for asteroid detection. If an asteroid – or a spacecraft – passes through the field of view, it shows up as a frequency shift relative to the background starlight, indicating a change in angle of motion.
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