Milestone-Proposal talk:Long-Range Wideband Three-Dimensional Satellite Imaging Using the ALCOR Radar

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
2. Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
8. Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
9. Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
10. Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
11. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
12. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
13. Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
14. Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
15. Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
16. Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

1. Is proposal fohttps://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/w/index.php?title=Milestone-Proposal_talk:Long-Range_Wideband_Three-Dimensional_Satellite_Imaging_Using_the_ALCOR_Radar&action=edit&section=2&replyto=yesr an achievement rather than for a person? YES.. If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name? 2. Was proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology? YES 3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? NO 4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology? YES 5.Is proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) YES ..such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the advocate. If the advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.

1. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent? YES

6. Is proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public? YES YES

1. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements? YES Is the address complete? YES Are the GPS coordinates correct and in decimal format? YES

7. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications? YES 7…. Scientific and technical units correct? (e.g. km, mm, hertz, etc.) Are acronyms correct and properly upperercased or lowercased? YES to all 8. Date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? YES https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Helpful_Hints_on_Citations,_Plaque_Locations

Re: Advocates’ Checklist -- Gilcooke (talk) 14:44, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

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Independent Expert Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering these questions, the History Committee asks that independent expert reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Re: Independent Expert Reviewers’ Checklist -- Martorella (talk) 20:02, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

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1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate? Yes, the suggested wording is accurate and fully reflect the milestone achievement 2. Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation? Although the images are classified and that there is no public-domain evidence, there is no doubt that MIT-LL achieved their goal of producing high-res images of space objects with the ALCOR system. Theoretical assessments and subsequent evidence produced by the TIRA system leave no doubt behind about those claims. 3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement? This milestone is an incredible achievement as it demonstrated and implemented quasi-real-time high-resolution 3D imaging of space objects at times where the challenges involved were hard and complex. This is a pioneer work that was repeated only 20 years later by another country. 4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed? At that time, this was the sole effort that was able to produce such result. Similar results only came much later in other countries with the construction of the TIRA (1990s).

Additional comments: this Milestone is only a part of the significant contribution that the MIT-LL has given to Space Situational and Domain Awareness (SSA/SDA). The work done with the ALCOR has inspired many to work in the SSA/SDA domain and has started a roadmap and a series of investments that have seen the development of long-range imaging systems for SSA/SDA at various frequencies, including TIRA (16GHz) and, ultimately, culminating with the HUSIR (96GHz).

Submission and Approval Log

Submitted date: 12 March 2024
Advocate approval date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Original Citation Title and Text -- Administrator4 (talk) 17:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Long-Range Wideband Three-Dimensional Satellite Imaging Using the ALCOR Radar, 1970-1987

Lincoln Laboratory used the ARPA-Lincoln C-band Observables Radar (ALCOR) to generate the first three-dimensional high-resolution radar images of objects in space: Salyut-1 space station imaged in 1971, and Skylab imaged in May 1973. These images were produced off-line with recorded radar data. In 1987, the first real-time images were produced by the Kwajalein Discrimination System designed and built by Lincoln Laboratory.