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Lunar exploration is of significant importance in the development and utilization of in situ lunar resources, water ice exploration, and astronomical science. In recent years, ground-based radar (GBR) has gained increasing attention in the field of lunar exploration due to its flexibility, low cost, and penetrating capabilities. This paper reviews the scientific research on lunar exploration using GBR, outlining the basic principles of GBR and the progress made in lunar exploration studies. Our paper introduces the fundamental principles of lunar imaging using GBR and systematically reviews studies on lunar surface/subsurface detection, the dielectric properties inversion of the lunar regolith, and polar water ice detection using GBR. In particular, the paper summarizes the current development status of the Chinese GBR and forecasts future development trends in China. This review will enhance the understanding of lunar exploration results using GBR radar, systematically demonstrate the main applications and scientific achievements of GBR in lunar exploration, and provide a reference for GBR radar in future lunar exploration missions.

Atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) can strongly modulate middle atmospheric circulation and can be a significant factor for the coupling between the lower atmosphere and the middle atmosphere. GWs are difficult to resolve in global atmospheric models due to their small scale; thus, GW observations play an important role in middle atmospheric studies. The climatology of GW variance and momentum in the low-latitude mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) region are revealed using multiple meteor radars, which are located at Kunming (25.6°N, 103.8°E), Sanya (18.4°N, 109.6°E), and Fuke (19.5°N, 109.1°E). The climatology and longitudinal variations in GW momentum fluxes and variance over the low-latitude region are reported. The GWs show strong seasonal variations and can greatly control the mesospheric horizontal winds via modulation of the quasi-geostrophic balance and momentum deposition. The different GW activities between Kunming and Sanya/Fuke are possibly consistent with the unique prevailing surface winds over Kunming and the convective system over the Tibetan Plateau according to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) data, and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) data. These findings provide insight for better understanding the coupling between the troposphere and mesosphere.

By using fast ionogram observations, we report the first simultaneous observations of ascending ion layers at equatorial and low latitudes. The ionosonde measurements at Sanya (18.3°N, 109.6°E; dip lat. 12.2°N) and Chumphon (10.7°N, 99.4°E; dip lat. 3.8°N) show that a high Es layer, which might contain metallic ions, was directly lifted upward from the local E region to F region bottomside at morning hours, in a pattern similar to the vertical drift of the F region background ionosphere driven by the daytime eastward electric field. A statistical analysis with Sanya ionosonde measurements shows that the low latitude ascending ion layer is not a rare phenomenon, with a maximum occurrence of 22% during equinox. The results indicate that at the latitudes far away from the magnetic equator, the local E region metallic ions could be directly brought into the F region with the ascending layer. It can be expected that fast ionogram measurements, which can easily capture the rapid evolution of the background ionosphere, will play an important role in studying the formation of some unexpected high altitude metallic layers.

As the observation accuracy of parameters in the ionosphere cannot be directly checked, the comparison with other observations is the main way to evaluate the data quality of satellite measurements. Through the comparative analysis between the in situ electron density (Ne) observed by the China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES) and Ne at about 500 km altitude detected by Qujing Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR), it was found that the pattern of CSES Ne is consistent with that of ISR Ne, and the correlation coefficient between the two sets of data is above 0.88 for different groups according to the magnitude. The value of CSES Ne is lower than that of ISR Ne, and the median value of the ratio for the difference between the conjugate data is 84.04%. Based on the comparison in the daytime between CSES Ne and ionosonde observations in China, it was found that the trend of the two datasets is mostly similar, and the correlation coefficient in some locations can reach up to 0.7. The distribution of CSES Ne and correlation coefficients at different latitudes show that the relationship is relatively better around the peak of the equatorial ionization anomaly (EIA). The differences in the value between CSES Ne and ionosonde data also exist, the relative change of which is about 80–95% in the daytime.

The disturbances of the ionosphere caused by thunderstorms or lightning events in the troposphere have an impact on global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals. Gravity waves (GWs) triggered by thunderstorms are one of the main factors that drive short-period Travelling Ionospheric Disturbances (TIDs). At mid-latitudes, ionospheric GWs can be detected by GNSS signals. However, at low latitudes, the multi-variability of the ionosphere leads to difficulties in identifying GWs induced by thunderstorms through GNSS data. Though disturbances of the ionosphere during low-latitude thunderstorms have been investigated, the explicit GW observation by GNSS and its propagation pattern are still unclear. In this paper, GWs with periods from 6 to 20 min are extracted from band-pass filtered GNSS carrier phase observations without cycle-slips, and 0.2–0.8 Total Electron Content Unit (TECU) magnitude perturbations are observed when the trajectories of ionospheric pierce points fall into the perturbed region. The propagation speed of 102.6–141.3 m/s and the direction of the propagation indicate that the GWs are propagating upward from a certain thunderstorm at lower atmosphere. The composite results of disturbance magnitude, period, and propagation velocity indicate that GWs initiated by thunderstorms and propagated from the troposphere to the ionosphere are observed by GNSS for the first time in the low-latitude region.

The Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI) and meteor radar are two important techniques for measuring the horizontal wind field in mesopause region, the observations of which still lack comprehensive comparison. Kunming Observatory (25.6°N,103.8°E) has deployed both instruments in recent years and provides collocated meteor radar and FPI observations. The meteor radar measures the horizontal wind fields over 24 hours every day continuously, whereas the FPI can only work during the night with clear air condition. FPI horizontal wind data from the 892.0-nm airglow emission (with a peak height at ~87 km) from 26 January to 8 February 2019 were comparatively analyzed with simultaneous meteor radar observations, which cover the range between 80 and 90 km with a vertical resolution of 1.8 km. It was found that the temporal variations in the horizontal wind fields observed by the FPI and meteor radar were generally consistent with one another, with the highest 2-D correlation coefficients of 0.91 (0.88) at 88 (87) km for the meridional (zonal) wind, which agreed with the peak height of OH airglow emission observed by the TIMED/SABER instrument. In addition, the correlation coefficient for the weighted meteor radar horizontal wind by OH concentration between 86 and 88 km and 85 and 89 km increased slightly from 0.91 (0.89) to 0.92 (0.89) for the meridional (zonal) wind, which indicated the contribution of OH concentration beyond the peak height to the FPI wind observations. We also found that the absolute horizontal wind values detected by two instruments were linearly correlated with a slope of ~1.3 for both wind components, and meteor radar wind observations were usually larger than the FPI observations.