ESA Echoes in Space History: Patent of Radar
Channel: EO College
Date: 08/10/2017

By the 1930s the radio technology and early radar concepts were well-established in many countries, often in secret. However, it is the work by the Scottish scientist Robert Watson-Watt (1912–1973) that is widely seen as the birth of truly operational pulsed radar systems. In 1935 Watson-Watt received a patent for his Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) device which was capable of locating and ranging aircraft using pulses of microwaves rather than continuous waves. At around the same time, the NRL in the USA were also perfecting the application of pulsed radars specifically for detecting objects. Abandoning the idea of a death ray, he had proposed instead that it should be possible to develop a system to locate incoming enemy aircraft to provide an early warning, even at night and through cloud cover (since clouds are transparent to radio waves, and longer wavelength microwaves). Watson-Watt was given a team of scientists and engineers to develop the system and by the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 a series of tall towers with radio transmitters and receivers, known as “Chain Home”, had been constructed along the Eastern coastline of Britain.

Echoes in Space is the first Massive Open Online Course on Radar Remote Sensing, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Register now: https://eo-college.org

Echoes from space will take you on a journey through the exciting world of Radar Remote Sensing. Learn the basics that will help you to understand where this technology is coming from, how the images are acquired and which manifold applications already use Radar Remote Sensing to help protect our planet.