FARSIDE News

Bezos’ Blue Origin May Ferry Futuristic Radio Telescope To Moon’s Far Side

Anonymous — Tue, 24 May 2022 18:35:11 +0000

Bezos’ Blue Origin May Ferry Futuristic Radio Telescope To Moon’s Far Side Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/24/2022 - 12:35

Bruce Dorminey

From Forbes: In the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain front range, an area well known for cutting-edge space technology, Jack Burns, a longtime astrophysics professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, may finally be seeing a decades-old vision of a low frequency lunar radio telescope coming to fruition.

Since the mid-1960s, Burns and colleagues have been saying that our Moon’s far side would make a perfect spot for low frequency radio astronomy.

“It’s the most radio quiet location in the inner solar system,” Burns told me in his Boulder office. In order to get this quiet, you would have to go all the way out to the equivalent orbit of Jupiter in order to reduce the amount of radio noise coming from Earth down to the same level it is on the Moon’s far side, he says.
But unlike previous initiatives to make a lunar far side telescope array a reality, this time commercial space technology’s accessibility has created a paradigm shift so that new space players like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have expressed a strong interest in ferrying this telescopic array to the Moon. Whether this ambitious billion-dollar far side array will ultimately be funded solely by NASA or via a public-private partnership has yet to be determined, however.

Blue Origin would like NASA to fund them to bring our telescope but to the Moon, says Burns. But Bezos himself is interested in the science, Burns notes. Although technology for the Farside Array for Radio Science Investigation of the Dark Ages and Exoplanets (FARSIDE) is already in place, the lunar lander itself still needs some finishing touches. Thus, FARSIDE isn’t expected to see first light on the lunar surface until 2030 at earliest. Read more…

Off

Traditional

White

Moon’s Far Side: New Observatories Proposed

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 17:31:14 +0000

Moon’s Far Side: New Observatories Proposed Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/24/2021 - 11:31

Leonard David

From Leonard David’s Inside Outer Space: Earth’s Moon is being eyed as an on-location locale for operating unique and novel observatories. The just-concluded NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium was the setting for reviewing several NIAC-backed studies.

One concept outlined at NIAC is the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon, explained by Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This proposal centered on deploying a wire mesh using wall-climbing robots in a 3 to 5 kilometer diameter crater, with a suitable depth-to-diameter ratio, to form a parabolic reflector with a one kilometer diameter.

A selected crater must have several attributes: No boulders or outcrops; a complete crater rim; and a level surface outside the crater. Read more...

Off

Traditional

White

It’s Time NASA Built A ‘Cosmic Dawn’ Telescope On The Moon—And It Has Four Astonishing Plans To Choose From

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 22:45:40 +0000

It’s Time NASA Built A ‘Cosmic Dawn’ Telescope On The Moon—And It Has Four Astonishing Plans To Choose From Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/28/2021 - 16:45

Jamie Carter

From Forbes: Let’s do astronomy from the Moon. Spurred on by the collapse of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the continuing degradation of the night sky by light pollution and the coming era of mega-constellations of satellites come four projects that seek to take astronomy to the Moon’s far side.

Lunar astronomy is an idea that’s been around since the 1960s, but new engineering and technology is at last making astronomy on the Moon a real possibility.

Why bother? About 240,000 miles/380,000 kilometers from Earth, observations can be made of low frequency radio in radio-quiet conditions and also in ultraviolet light—something blocked by Earth’s atmosphere—that could help reveal the unexplored early cosmos. And since it takes the Moon 27 days to orbit Earth, a telescope would be in darkness for half the month and able to observe the same object for almost two weeks at a time.

Astronomy has been done before both by Apollo astronauts and, since 2013, by China’s Chang-e rovers. Should NASA now commit to building the next big space observatory on the lunar surface? Read more...

Off

Traditional

White

NASA Might Put a Huge Telescope on the Far Side of the Moon

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 19:42:11 +0000

NASA Might Put a Huge Telescope on the Far Side of the Moon Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2021 - 13:42

Chris Wright

From WIRED: The Universe is constantly beaming its history to us. For instance: Information about what happened long ago contained in the long-length radio waves that are ubiquitous throughout the universe, likely hold the details about how the first stars and black holes were formed. There’s a problem, though. Because of our atmosphere and noisy radio signals generated by modern society, we can’t read them from Earth.

That’s why NASA is in the early stages of planning what it would take to build an automated research telescope on the far side of the moon. One of the most ambitious proposals would build the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, the largest (by a lot) filled-aperture radio telescope dish in the universe. Another duo of projects, called FarSide and FarView, would connect a vast array of antennas—eventually over 100,000, many built on the moon itself and made out of its surface material—to pick up the signals. The projects are all part of NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which awards innovators and entrepreneurs with funding to advance radical ideas in hopes of creating breakthrough aerospace concepts. While they are still hypothetical, and years away from reality, the findings from these projects could reshape our cosmological model of the universe.

“With our telescopes on the moon, we can reverse-engineer the radio spectra that we record, and infer for the first time the properties of the very first stars,” said Jack Burns, a cosmologist at the �鶹��Ѱ�� and the co-investigator and science lead for both FarSide and FarView. “We care about those first stars because we care about our own origins—I mean, where did we come from? Where did the Sun come from? Where did the Earth come from? The Milky Way?” Read more...

Off

Traditional

White

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

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2021 21:39:56 +0000

NASA eyes moon's dark side for astronomy, new telescopes Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/19/2021 - 15:39

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…

Off

Traditional

White

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

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2021 19:08:51 +0000

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/15/2021 - 13:08

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...

Off

Traditional

White

Exploring the far side of the Moon and beyond with NESS

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 23:53:12 +0000

Exploring the far side of the Moon and beyond with NESS Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/23/2021 - 17:53

Clifford Holt

From Innovation News Network: NASA has created the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), bringing together teams of researchers who are interested in the Moon, asteroids and the moons of Mars, airless bodies in Earth’s neighborhood. Most of the teams involved in SSERVI are therefore interested in areas such as lunar geology, resource extraction, and so on. However, the Network for Exploration and Space Science (NESS), which is headed up by Dr Jack Burns at the �鶹��Ѱ��, proposed to do astrophysics and cosmology from the Moon, as the far side of the Moon, in particular, is the only truly radio quiet location in the inner Solar System. As such, the far side of the moon is the perfect place to locate radio telescopes that can be used to explore aspects of the Universe that cannot be addressed in any other way. These include, Burns told The Innovation Platform, the so-called ‘dark ages’ of the Universe, the cosmic dawn, and, indeed, exoplanets. “We can also use these telescopes on the far side of the moon to look at the Sun,” he said.

Led by the University of Colorado, NESS has developed into a team of ten universities and NASA centres which have been working together for almost four years. The network is actively involved in addressing some of the broad design questions for missions to the Moon. Burns explained: “We look at the science drivers, undertake theoretical modelling, conduct equipment and instrument design, and plan missions. We have been successful in doing that, and there are a couple of exciting missions coming up in the next few years, and then we will propose more for the longer term.” Read more…

Off

Traditional

White

FarView: One-Of-A-Kind Lunar Observatory

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 16:50:09 +0000

FarView: One-Of-A-Kind Lunar Observatory Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 10:50

Tomasz Nowakowski

From The Tundra: Lunar Resources Inc. of Houston, Texas and the �鶹��Ѱ�� are launching a new research effort to lay the groundwork for a one-of-a-kind lunar radio astronomy observatory called the Lunar Farside Radio Observatory, or FarView, a network of hundreds of miles of antennas constructed on the far side of the moon using materials harvested from the lunar surface itself. Jack Burns, a professor in the departments of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Physics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, developed the concept for the unprecedented observatory. Watch the video.

Off

Traditional

White

The Lunar FARSIDE Telescope

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 22:18:58 +0000

The Lunar FARSIDE Telescope Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/16/2021 - 16:18

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.

Off

Traditional

White

NASA-funded project to explore one-of-a-kind lunar observatory

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 00:01:02 +0000

NASA-funded project to explore one-of-a-kind lunar observatory Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/01/2021 - 17:01

Daniel Strain

From �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Today: Lunar Resources, Inc. of Houston, Texas, and the �鶹��Ѱ�� are launching a new research effort to lay the groundwork for a one of a kind lunar radio astronomy observatory, a network of hundreds of miles of antennas constructed on the far side of the moon using materials harvested from the lunar surface itself.

NASA recently awarded the team a $125,000 grant to complete a nine-month study on the project, called the Lunar Farside Radio Observatory, or FarView. The funding is part of the 2021 Phase I NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The program is highly competitive with less than 5% of proposals selected for an award.

The NIAC program selects novel concepts to transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs, such as radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts, while engaging America's innovators and entrepreneurs as partners in the journey. Jack Burns, a professor in the departments of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Physics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, developed the concept for the unprecedented observatory. Read more...

Off

Traditional

White