FARSIDE

NASA eyes moon's dark side for astronomy, new telescopes

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2021 21:40:24 +0000

NASA eyes moon's dark side for astronomy, new telescopes Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/19/2021 - 15:40

Paul Brinkmann

From UPI: NASA scientists, as well as astronomers around the world, plan to install lunar observatories in the next few years to peer into the universe's ancient past -- just after the Big Bang.

Science equipment headed to the moon already includes a spectrometer built for launch in early 2022, known as ROLSES, which will study how sunlight charges the slight lunar atmosphere.

The acronym includes the word "sheath," which refers to a field of energy created by sunlight reflecting from the bright lunar surface. And NASA scientists are formulating plans for observatories on the far side of the moon, where darkness and clear sightlines could yield new discoveries about the universe before stars existed.

One bold plan to build a telescope in a lunar crater, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, has received $500,000 for further study. Read more…

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A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2021 19:09:00 +0000

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/15/2021 - 13:09

Eric Betz

From Discover: Some 13.8 billion years ago, our universe burst into being. In a fraction of a second, it ballooned from subatomic to the size of a grapefruit. And as the cosmos grew and grew, it also cooled, until the building blocks of matter — subatomic particles called quarks and gluons — could form. Eventually, this quark soup aggregated into atoms. Atoms merged into larger molecules. Gas filled the universe. Yet the cosmos would sit like this — dark — for hundreds of millions of years before light shone from the first stars and galaxies.

We understand parts of what happened in the early universe. But a huge blank still haunts astronomers. They call it the “dark ages” because, with no starlight to study, they’re left guessing where all the familiar stuff came from. How did we go from a gas-filled universe to the one we now see in the night sky?

“The early universe had no galaxies, just hot stuff. As things cooled off, something had to happen before the galaxies formed,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Honestly, we’ve got lots of stories and lots of predictions, but no measurements.”

Unravelling this mystery is “one of the great objectives of modern-day astronomy,” he adds.

To solve it, scientists and engineers have identified an unlikely location for their work, one that could help shape the next generation of astronomical research: the farside of the moon. Read more...

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The Lunar FARSIDE Telescope

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 22:16:50 +0000

The Lunar FARSIDE Telescope Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/16/2021 - 16:16

From Universe Today: Fraser Cain spoke with Dr. Jack Burns, the Principle Investigator for the Lunar FARSIDE telescope about installing a radio telescope on the farside of the Moon that would be capable of observing the first stars and black holes during the Dark Ages and Epoch of Reionization. Watch the video.

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Telescopes on the Moon

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 19:33:02 +0000

Telescopes on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/22/2020 - 13:33

From Launch Pad Astronomy: Telescopes on the Moon has been a dream since the 1830's. But apart from two small telescopes on Apollo 16 and Chang'e-3, we haven't sent any telescopes to the Moon yet. But now that NASA is planning to return to the Moon permanently, astronomers are once again thinking about placing telescopes on the Moon. Watch the video.

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The history and future of telescopes on the Moon

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 18:25:24 +0000

The history and future of telescopes on the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/03/2020 - 12:25

Eric Betz

From Astronomy.com: For radio astronomers, Earth is a noisy place. Many modern electronics leak radio signals, which interfere with the long, faint wavelengths of light studied by radio observatories. And for decades, this invisible light pollution has pushed radio observatories deeper into so-called “radio quiet zones.” This forces radio astronomers far from other people, out to places like the barren Atacama Desert in Chile.

But it’s not just human-made devices that obstruct faint radio signals. Natural phenomena from Earth and the Sun can interfere, too. Adding insult to injury, Earth’s ionosphere — where solar radiation ionizes molecules in our upper atmosphere — blocks the longest radio wavelengths from reaching our �鶹ӰԺ surface at all.

Scientists have long eyed a solution: the farside of the Moon. Because it always faces away from Earth, a radio telescope placed on the lunar farside would be almost completely sheltered from Earth-generated radio noise. There, astronomers would study a range of phenomena that can’t be seen from our planet, or even by Earth-orbiting space telescopes. A telescope on the Moon could show us what happened before the universe formed its first stars and galaxies, or let us see electromagnetic fields around distant exoplanets, revealing extremely subtle yet fundamental properties related to a world’s true potential for hosting life. Read more...

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The Far Side Of The Moon Is The Perfect Place For a Radio Telescope

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 17:22:21 +0000

The Far Side Of The Moon Is The Perfect Place For a Radio Telescope Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2020 - 10:22

We’ve now passed the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and all eyes are back on the Moon. NASA is planning to return to the Moon by 2024 with its Artemis mission, the Chinese have put the Moon firmly in their plans for space exploration, and even SpaceX thinks the Moon is the perfect destination to test out the capabilities of its Starship.

But what can you do with the Moon? Refuel spacecraft with resources drawn from the lunar regolith? Mine its helium 3 for your fusion reactors? Build a lunar amusement park?

In fact, the far side of the Moon might make one of the best platforms we have for radio telescopes. One side of the Moon is completely blocked from Earth’s constantly increasing radio traffic, giving it the perfect view to the most sensitive radio signals in the Universe. Watch the video.

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Moon FARSIDE: Lunar Astronomy Proposal Takes Aim at Cosmic Dark Ages and Exoplanets

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 20:48:50 +0000

Moon FARSIDE: Lunar Astronomy Proposal Takes Aim at Cosmic Dark Ages and Exoplanets Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 12/15/2019 - 13:48

Leonard David

From Space.com: The far side of the moon is an attention grabber for many reasons. A new mission idea capitalizes on those reasons in a project dubbed the Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets, shortened to this enlightened abbreviation: FARSIDE.

The concept would place a low-radio-frequency interferometric array on the far side of the moon. Jack Burns of the �鶹ӰԺ and Gregg Hallinan of the California Institute of Technology have sketched out a way to execute the mission in a NASA-funded report published last month. Read more...

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2020 Decadal Survey Planning

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 17:27:45 +0000

2020 Decadal Survey Planning Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/18/2019 - 10:27

From NASA Science: This page describes the activities of NASA's Astrophysics Division in preparation for the 2020 Decadal Survey. To learn more about Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics process, please visit the National Academies website. Prior Decadal Reports are also available on that site.

Listed below are the final reports from the NASA's 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Studies, both the Large and the Probes Mission Concept Studies, and other activities. The reports represent the culmination of four years of intense work by the astrophysics community, with thousands of scientists involved and thousands of page written. This public page serves as NASA's submission to the 2020 Decadal Survey Committee. Read more about the FARSIDE Final Report.

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Alien Hunters Need the Far Side of the Moon to Stay Quiet

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 21:35:04 +0000

Alien Hunters Need the Far Side of the Moon to Stay Quiet Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/15/2019 - 14:35

Daniel Oberhaus

From Wired: China made history earlier this year when its Chang'e-4 lander became the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon. During the two-week lunar days, the lander and its small rover, Yutu 2, beam images and other data to an orbiter for relay back to Earth. Together they’ve furnished planetary scientists with unprecedented access to the backside of our Janus-faced neighbor. But not everyone was thrilled that China crossed into this new lunar frontier, and few have been more vocal about their concerns than the scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Last month, the SETI permanent committee of the International Astronautical Association hosted its second round of negotiations about the lunar farside in Washington, DC. The exploration of the moon might seem like an issue outside the purview of this group of professional alien hunters, but the far side of the moon is the most radio quiet place in the inner solar system and they want to keep it that way in case ET calls. Indeed, they argue that the fate of the lunar farside may determine whether we ever detect a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

“At the moment, SETI is not doomed, but it might be doomed in the next 50 years and that’s being optimistic,” says Claudio Maccone, an astrophysicist and the chair of the IAA SETI committee. “We must insist on this topic while there is still time to do something.”

On Earth, radio astronomers must contend with interference from television broadcasts, cell phone signals, satellites, and the atmosphere as they scan the cosmos for faint signals from primordial stars, organic molecules, or intelligent life. This makes the lunar farside an attractive site for future radio telescopes because the moon blocks all the radio signals from Earth. It’s like the difference between stargazing in New York City and stargazing in the middle of the desert—in the city light pollution obscures almost all of the good stuff. Read more...

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The Planet Hunting Machine

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 16:37:16 +0000

The Planet Hunting Machine Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/14/2019 - 10:37

Po Bronson

From Alta: Sometime in the next decade, NASA hopes to deploy a rover to the dark side of the moon, where it will roll out 128 small, lightweight radio antennae in a flower configuration over 100 square kilometers of the lunar dirt. The FARSIDE project is designed to look for habitable planets in other solar systems.
But you can see it today, already in operation, here in California.

The Cosmic Dawn is happening again, so get your pressure suit on. To look for life “out there,” go visit Gregg Hallinan. He’s a professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. And with about $70 worth of unleaded gas, you can drive from anywhere in the Golden State to his crisp-white shipping container in the Owens Valley and take a gander outside our solar system.

The Owens Valley is a spectacle of nature, and even more beautiful for being in the middle of nowhere. The Mammoth Mountain ski area looks down on it from the northwest. The 4,000-year-old bristlecone pines of the White Mountains do the same from the east. Los Angeles, to the south, still owns the valley floor, in order to suck the water its way (“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown”). Locals from Bishop and Big Pine brag of the golden trout they catch in the rivers. It’s high desert, a xerophytic ecosystem fed by bajadas and alluvial fans that sprout next to nothing—bitterbrush, burrobush, buckwheat, creosote, and the occasional lizard or jackrabbit.

There’s a certain early-space-era design aesthetic that takes the breath away when you see it up close. At Caltech’s observatory in the Owens Valley, the 40 Meter radio telescope triggers that type of “drink your Tang” awe. The locals call it Big Ears. Nearly a million pounds of steel tubing and 14,000 square feet of aluminum paneling slathered in 1.5 tons of NASA-white paint can’t help but give you a 130-foot heartbeat. The 40 Meter has been in Hollywood films. It’s got movie star presence. Twice a week, it checks on about 1,800 blazars, which are jets of radioactive matter shooting at us from black holes. It has been the celebrity here for half a century. “The 40 Meter scope could pick up a cell phone on Pluto,” Mark Hodges, an OVRO design engineer, tells me. Read more...

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