Radar

After studying vintage film of Antarctic radar data, Thwaites Glacier was found to be melting even faster than we thought.

The smaller and lighter electronics get, the more ways they can be used. A team of researchers has come up with a compact radar system the size of a matchbox that could be deployed in drones and other gadgets where portability and low cost are important.

Last year a huge lake of liquid water was apparently found beneath the ice at the Martian south pole. A new study has now examined how it might have gotten there, and concluded that Mars must have had volcanic activity much more recently than is normally believed, and may even still be active today.

Scientists from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica's (INAF) Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali and the University of Perugia have developed a towable ground radar designed to look for water on the planet Mars that was tested by a team of analog astronauts.

​Could the stethoscope be on its way to becoming a quaint instrument from yesteryear? Well, maybe. German scientists are reporting success in using radar to monitor people's heartbeats – and the technology could allow for more accurate diagnoses of heart maladies.

Although finger-prick blood glucose tests are a daily necessity for millions of diabetics, a less-painful alternative may be on the horizon. Led by Prof. George Shaker, a team from Canada's University of Waterloo is looking at using radar and artificial intelligence (AI) to do the job.

Leonardo Aerospace has taken the wraps off of its new expendable electronic countermeasures decoy for protecting large military transport aircraft. Billed as the first of its kind for transport protection, the BriteCloud 55-T is designed to confuse the targeting systems of radar-guided missiles.

Stealth technology may not be very stealthy in the future thanks to a new quantum radar system that uses the phenomenon of quantum entanglement to eliminate heavy background noise, thereby defeating stealth anti-radar technologies to detect incoming aircraft and missiles with much greater accuracy.

Yet more safety and driver assist technologies are set to move from the car world into the motorcycle world, with Ducati announcing it will release a motorcycle fitted with front and rear radars in 2020 as part of its "Safety Road Map 2025"​ strategy.

​Last week, Earth was buzzed by asteroid 3122 Florence, the largest space rock NASA has seen come this close since it began tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs). NASA took the opportunity to study Florence close up, confirming its monster size and revealing that it has two tiny moons.

Asteroids whizz past Earth on a regular basis, usually only a few meters wide. But next month we’re due for a close encounter with a monster space rock measuring 4.4 km (2.7 mi) across, making it the largest near-Earth object to come this close since NASA began tracking them almost 20 years ago.

The radar at the heart of US Army's Patriot missile system is getting a bit long in the tooth, so Lockheed Martin has announced the debut of its next-generation air and missile defense Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar demonstrator.