New Method Discovered For Making Telescopes On the Moon

NASA scientists have discovered a way to craft very large mirrors using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust. They say the technique will allow the construction of massive telescopes on the moon without the expense and risk of transporting the mirrors from Earth. Douglas Rabin of the Goddard Space Flight Center is quoted saying, "Our method could be scaled-up on the moon, using the ubiquitous lunar dust, to create giant telescope mirrors up to 50 meters in diameter." While this breakthrough was relatively cheap, NASA is currently offering up to $10 million for other good lunar research projects.

dustbuster

[Anonymous Coward]

so .. after the mirrors are finished. how do they propose to keep the mirrors dustfree ?

Re:Ingenious..But

[arthurpaliden]

The problem that I see is that they will first have to build the fabrication facility and if they are going to spin a 50m morror that is going to be one large building.

Re:Aluminum?

[Idiomatick]

you cant give him shit for quoting the article....

Is this really a BEST method?

[Crookdotter]

If we're thinking about people stationed on the moon, living in habitats big enough to not go nuts in, with either on site energy generation, oxygen production and food supplies, or all of these things shipped in, then I don't see how making and transporting large mirrors in parts and assembling them on the moon is such a complex task. Especially when contrasted against making the thing in situ, in an environment we aren't familiar with, is very deadly and experimental. Think about the factory that would have to be assembled, that could spin a liquid mirror in the vacuum and dust environment of the moon. In many ways, it seems MORE complex to make it up there. I think it's great that people are thinking up these things, but in this case I don't see it as a resource or an energy saver.

Re:Ingenious..But

[Torvaun]

What "elements" are you protecting the fabrication facility from?

The solid ones that leave craters.

Re:One of those "next" steps seems hard

[Ravon Rodriguez]

It's the meteorites that I'd worry about. The moon, having no atmosphere, gets impacted a lot more than earth.

Re:Vs. Hubble?

[Velocir]

Size, availability of materials to construct it out of, and, as TFA pointed out, a stable platform to work from.

Re:Vs. Hubble?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple advantages, off the top of my head:

If it is build on the moon, it can be much larger than anything that can be carried up in one shot on a rocket.

It doesn't need to be periodically boosted back up into a higher orbit.

Plenty of real estate for large solar arrays/backup systems.

If it is part of a permanent manned outpost, astronauts will be on-hand to do repairs promptly.

Stable surface to stand on means that fragile gyros and limited fuel are not needed.

There are probably more good reasons