2 Pics: NASA funds proposal to build a 1Km wide telescope on the far side of the moon

NASA is funding an early-stage proposal to build a meshed telescope inside a crater on the far side of the moon, according to Vice.

This "dark side" is the face of the moon that is permanently positioned away from Earth, and as such it offers a rare view of the dark cosmos, unhindered by radio interference from humans and our by our planet’s thick atmosphere.

The ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope, would be called the "Lunar Crater Radio Telescope" and would have "tremendous" advantages compared to telescopes on our planet, the idea’s founder Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a proposal.

The telescope — designed as a wire mesh — would be deployed into a 2- to 3-mile-wide (3 to 5 kilometers) crater on the moon’s far side. The 0.62-mile-diameter (1 km) wire-mesh telescope would be stretched across the crater by NASA’s DuAxel Rovers, or wall-climbing robots, according to the proposal summary.

If built, the "Lunar Crater Radio Telescope" would be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the solar system, Bandyopadhyay wrote. A filled-aperture radio telescope is a telescope that uses a single dish to collect data rather than many dishes, according to Vice.

Because this telescope would be on the far side of the moon, it would avoid radio interference from Earth, satellites and even the sun’s radio-noise during the lunar night. It would also let us gaze out into the cosmos without the veil of Earth’s atmosphere.

The atmosphere reflects low-frequency wavelengths of light greater than 32.8 feet (10 meters), essentially blocking them from reaching ground-based telescopes. The telescope "could enable tremendous scientific discoveries in the field of cosmology by observing the early universe in the 10– 50m wavelength band…which has not been explored by humans till-date," Bandyopadhyay wrote.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9160&utm_content=LVS_newsletter+&utm_term=2962140&m_i=ApzEwPtFL97l05ZIuH9Eb6uf1FZG34lztELEeDW2sl2ty6jYhdotqjRFlmyjQcVYjbhuDVQAU%2BoLfnXYNKm_8Odgt3OP3xGDVx4%2B9QzAAd

One thought on “2 Pics: NASA funds proposal to build a 1Km wide telescope on the far side of the moon

  • 16th April 2020 at 6:42 pm
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    The Moon has many beneficial properties. As a site for a 1km telescope on the far side of the Moon, that’s just one.

    Another beneficial property of the Moon is its size. On the Earth, we’re limited to being able to actually tunnel into the interior by a few miles. As a consequence, our understanding of the Earth’s interior is quite limited.

    On the Moon, due to its much smaller mass, we should be able to drill into its interior perhaps ten times as far, if not more. Such a venture will be far more revealing as to the nature of the interior of any planet. If my beliefs are correct, we should find vast reservoirs of water in the interior of the moon; possibly even atmospheric conditions.

    Reply

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