SKA Working Group 7 Level-1 Science: Solar System Bodies

Solar system science, imaging thermal emission and radar imaging (note: good complementarity with ALMA/NGST) asteriods = protoplanets 'frozen' in different states of early evolution. study geological history, prospect for minerals, and probe beneath the regolith. Radar provides most accurate orbits (by far), particular interesting for near earth objects, and sub-km-scale imaging. Planetary satellites: at 20km resolution study cool lava flows on Io, ice techtonics and water vulcanism, and other surface structure on large planet satellites. Kuiper belt objects: best example of physical properties of large objects in protoplanetry dust disks ('proplids'). Almost nothing currently known (shapes, masses, rotation). Comets: imaging gas around comets (OH, other). Get a 3D image of cometary outflow strucutres, including jets and large fragments.

Additional notes: WG7 Bologna ; WG7 pre-Groningen

HARD 'NO' for Europe: Fundamental upper frequency limit of antennas


SKA Designs (requirements matrix)


Red=All agreed that it fails; Dark Blue=some say it fails; Pink=most say it fails.
Specification Requirement  China  Europe  India  Ozlens  Ozcyli  USA  Canada 
A/Tsys 20000 35000 10500 20000 20000 20000 20000 20000
FOV (deg2) 1 0.005 1 1 3.6 1 (8) 1 1(FPA)
#beams 1 1 8 1 2 8 (64) 1 350
beam separation 90 150 40x1 1
#subarrays few many many many many many few?
response time 100 <1 60 60 60 60 100
Freq range up to 20 0.3-6.0 0.15-1.5 0.15-10.0 0.1-5.0 0.10-9.0 0.15-34.0 0.1-22.0
Corr Bandwith freq/5 ? 0.2 3.0 2.4 3.2 4
#spectral channels 2x4096 2x4096 2x4096 16384
sampling time short
max baseline 350 300 2000 3000 10000 5000
50% area baseline 50 100 4 3 35
Tb sensitivity 1 ? 1 1 0.7 1
#independent IFs 3 4 4 4
Max sep. of IFs 1 full band full band
Spatial DNR 1e+05 1e+06 1e+06 1e+06 1e+06
Spectral DNR
Polarization DNR 1e+04 1e+04
#spatial pixels 1e+08 1e+08 5e+10
Special