Abstract
A detailed investigation has been made of the rapid fading of radio echoes from the moon on a frequency of 120 Mc/s. This has shown that the conclusion reached in an earlier paper that the moon behaves as a uniformly bright reflector is in need of revision, and that metre length radio waves are reflected from the moon, largely by a region at the centre of the visible disc, which has a radius of about one third of the moon. This result is supported by an investigation of the shape of the received echo using a receiver bandwidth 500 c/s and transmitter pulses of 10 and 2 msec. No lengthening of the transmitted pulse could be detected, indicating that the depth of the scattering region cannot be greater than about 1 msec. Range measurements show that the echo is returned from the front edge of the moon. The effective scattering area of a moon reflecting in this manner has been calculated, and the theoretical and observed signal to noise ratios are now in good agreement, indicating that the power reflection coefficient of the lunar surface is 0.1. The effect of this type of scattering on a moon relay communications system is briefly discussed.
Published Version
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