More power and smoother surface for Arecibo dish

The National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center at Cornell, which runs the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, is planning a series of improvements in the radio‐telescope radar system which, according to director Frank Drake, are expected to raise its sensitivity by a factor of 2000. Drake said that the upgrading program will enable the center to make radar maps of Venus with a resolution of about 1 km—comparable to the best currently‐available earth‐based maps of the moon—and to map Mercury, Mars and the major satellites of Jupiter.