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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The solar system is a busy place—in addition to the familiar large bodies, there is an uncountably large number of rocky asteroids and icy comets. These mostly stay put in their orbits far from Earth, but many also roam around the solar system. As they do, they shed material due to collisions, deformations or heating. Due to this, the Earth is surrounded by small particles we call interplanetary dust. By investigating the size and composition of the interplanetary dust, astronomers can indirectly investigate the activity and makeup of the parent bodies.

[...] Ground-based radar is very good at detecting the motion of meteors, but it does not reveal much information about the mass or composition of the meteors. Optical telescopes and sensors can infer those details based on the light given off by falling meteors due to interaction with the atmosphere. However, telescopes have a limited field of view and until recently lacked the sensitivity to see faint meteors at all. [Astronomer Ryou] Ohsawa and his team wished to imbue radar observatories with the powers of optical ones. After a few years, they have finally succeeded.

"We thought that if you could observe enough meteors simultaneously with both radar and optical facilities, details of the meteors in the optical data may correspond to previously unseen patterns in the radar data too," said Ohsawa. "I am pleased to report this is in fact the case. We recorded hundreds of events over several years and have now gained the ability to read information about meteor mass from subtle signals in radar data."

Journal Reference:
Ryou Ohsawa, et al. Relationship between radar cross section and optical magnitude based on radar and optical simultaneous observations of faint meteors, Planetary and Space Science (DOI: 10.1016/j.pss.2020.105011)

Original Submission