Radar images of asteroids and comets will be unveiled at next week's International Asteroids, Comets and Meteors Conference at Cornell University. The images, expected to include a striking degree of detail about Earth-approaching objects, were taken with the recently upgraded Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

Steven Ostro of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will present the images on July 26. He will describe the growing importance of radar in observations of asteroids and other minor bodies in the solar system. In addition to generating detailed images, radar can measure the distance and velocity of asteroids and comets to a high degree of precision, thus allowing their future orbits to be accurately predicted.

The Arecibo telescope, working in conjunction with a NASA/Deep Space Network antenna in California, can image near-Earth objects to a resolution as small as 50 feet (15 meters).