An ultra-long-wavelength radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based and Earth-orbiting telescopes.
Above – Notional view of LCRT on the far-side of the Moon. Credits: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay
Concept of operations for building LCRT.
Credits: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay
Benefits will include:
(i) Such a telescope can observe the universe at wavelengths greater than 10m (i.e., frequencies below 30MHz), which are reflected by the Earth’s ionosphere and are hitherto largely unexplored by humans, and
(ii) the Moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the lunar-surface telescope from radio interferences/noises from Earth-based sources, ionosphere, Earth-orbiting satellites, and Sun’s radio-noise during the lunar night.
We propose to deploy a 1km-diameter wire-mesh using wallclimbing DuAxel robots in a 3-5km-diameter lunar crater on the far-side, with suitable depth-to-diameter ratio, to form a sphericalcap reflector.
This Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), with 1km diameter, will be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System. LCRT could enable tremendous scientific discoveries in the field of cosmology by observing the early universe in the 10– 50m wavelength band (i.e., 6–30MHz frequency band), which has not been explored by humans till-date.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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“a wire mesh disk between it & the earth & sun would stop radio noise from those sources as well as the moon would.” it seems to be inherent in these Moon plans that a simple shield would not be as good. Very faint signals being sought.
A nod to Harlan Smith would be nice!
I have seen the suggestion that you would be better off with a similar radio dish at the Earth Sun L2 point & a wire mesh disk between it & the earth & sun would stop radio noise from those sources as well as the moon would. A radio dish there could be more easily pointed anywhere in the sky.
Brian – just to be clear, it’s a Phase 1 $125,000 award for a study. Not “funded to build a telescope”. But more importantly, would it be possible for this telescope to receive a transmission of Dark Side of The Moon that, after almost 40 years would have traveled into space and then back to us?