Space.com is looking at what we know about the moon and why we care about it. In the lead up to Artemis 1, join us for a special report on moon week.
Future lunar missions could have a lot of science to offer.
Scientists hope to one day use a radio telescope on the far side of the moon to explore deeper into the universe than even the James Webb Space Telescope can.
There is an argument for putting a radio telescope on the far side of the moon to look at radio frequencies that are polluted by humans on Earth.
As NASA prepares to return to the moon, lunar scientists are excited.
One of the panels of the recent astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey focused on observing from space. A proposal for a lunar telescope led by Jack Burns of the University of Colorado, Boulder, was submitted as a potentialprobe class mission costing $1 billion to $2 billion. Since the 1980s, Burns has been working on a plan for a radio telescope on the moon.
A new concept called the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope is being evaluated by a team from NASA.
Bandyopadhyay told Space.com that they want to build a 350-meter-diameter radio telescope in a 1.3 kilometer-wide crater on the far side of the moon. There is a 1, 150 foot wide dish in the crater.
The scale of the telescope was not feasible because of the mass that would need to be flown from Earth. "As we looked at the science, we realized that a diameter of 350 meters would be enough to give us the science that we want," Bandyopadhyay said.
The Epoch of Reionization is a distant era in the past. There were no stars or galaxies after the Bigbang. The period has been called the Cosmic Dark Ages. The universe was lit up by the hydrogen as it formed stars and galaxies. The early era is the one that the lunar crater radio telescope hopes to see.
The wavelength of the radio waves emitted by hydrogen in the Dark Ages will be longer due to the expansion of the universe.
It's difficult to detect this light on Earth because the ionosphere can reflect it back into space, and because radio interference obscures it. There is no ionosphere on the far side of the moon so a giant radio telescope should be built there.
A global single-receiver measurement is needed to understand what the dark ages looked like. It's exactly what we're suggesting.
Bandyopadhyay wants to send a spaceship to a crater on the moon. In order to get to the lunar regolith, multiple cables with anchor would be fired into the crater. The framework for holding the wire mesh radio dish would be created by the cables pulling tight and folding into the lander. Since Earth can't be seen from the far side of the moon, a feed antenna would be deployed above the dish and a satellite overhead would give a beacon signal to calibrate the telescope.
That is the plan. It would take a billion dollars to make the telescope mission a success.
The telescope needs strong support from the scientific community to get a recommendation in the next survey.
There is a very strong case for why this should be done. Hopefully when the next decadal survey comes around we have put enough time and effort into this that they recommend the mission.
The issues that worked against FARSIDE could work against the lunar crater radio telescope because it is too niche.
He said it would be hard to get it ranked number one in the next decadal survey.
In that case, there may be another option that meshes with NASA's desire to do more exploration on the moon. He said that there are reasons to want to do more frequent flights to the moon.
More than 50 small science payloads will be delivered to the moon by private contractors over the next three years in NASA's Commercial lunar Payloads Services program. The Schrdinger crater is an impact basin on the far-side of the moon near the lunar south pole and will be visited by three of these payloads.
The far-side of the moon is one of the primary locations that NASA wants to get information from, according to a planetary scientist at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
The second youngest impact basin on the moon is believed to be Schrdinger. The relationship between the formation and size of the crater, as well as the interior structure of it, will be investigated by the three payloads.
The impact that formed Schrdinger is thought to have penetrated all the way through the moon's upper crust and mantle. Understanding the chemistry of the moon, what the moon is made from inside and out, and how it cooled off when it was volcanically active are some of the things we can learn from that.
The seismometers can be used to listen for moonquakes caused by meteorite impacts or by the strain on the moon's interior caused by Earth's movements. Scientists can learn a lot about the structure, composition and density of the moon's interior from the signal that FSS will detect after the earthquake.
The LITMS experiment will be able to take the internal temperature of the moon with the help of a heat flow probe.
The Apollo heat probe was made at a hot region of the moon. It will be the first time that LITMS will be outside of that area.
LuSEE will study dust in the moon's exosphere, which is the thin layer of gas and dust that clings to the surface.
There are three small robotic experiments that could lead to further exploration of the far side. The Yutu 2 rover became the first vehicle to land on the far side of the moon when it touched down on January 3, 2019.
The launch of NASA's Artemis 1 mission to the moon will take place on Monday. The sun rises at 1233GMT. Space.com has live updates on the mission, as well as live launch coverage from NASA.
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