Radio Sextant

When Physicist K. G. Jansky of Bell laboratories discovered in 1932 that he could pick up radio waves from objects in space, he founded the exciting science of radio astronomy. As the sailors of antiquity had made the most of ancient astronomical findings, the U.S. Navy began studying radio astronomy to see whether a celestial radio signal might be something to steer by. Recently, the Naval Research Laboratory, working with the Collins Radio Co. of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, revealed some details of a radio sextant that can navigate ships by radio waves from space.

The "eye" of the radio sextant, according to Radio-Astronomer Fred Haddock of NRL, is a dish-shaped antenna only three feet in diameter. When the receiver is switched on, it readily picks up the radio waves that come from the sun, and automatically turns to a point in the sun's direction. Then it "locks on," tracking the sun as long as it is above the horizon. The ship's navigator can find his position just as if he had an assistant watching the sun through an ordinary optical sextant. No cloudy weather gets in the way of the radio sextant, nor can an enemy jam the radio impluses (as is possible with other radio aids to navigation, such as Loran).

The sun, of course, is not around at night, but Haddock believes that mariners may eventually be able to steer by the mysterious "radio stars" that shine only in radio frequencies (TIME, June 21). Their waves are much weaker than the sun's, so a bigger antenna will probably be necessary. If navigation equipment can, indeed, be devised to track the radio stars, a ship will never again need be lost in a stormy night.

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