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Moon NASA

NASA Contemplates Turning a Moon Crater Into a Giant, Powerful Telescope (cnet.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the decisions-decisions dept.
NASA has selected a lunar-crater radio telescope idea to receive funding through its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the agency announced on Tuesday. The Phase I award goes to projects in very early stages of development. CNET reports: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the mind behind the moon dream. Making it happen would require sending robots to the far side of the moon and using the machines to deploy a wire mesh over a crater. Bandyopadhyay's proposal lists the benefits of locating a telescope on the far side of the moon, including that "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."

The moon telescope project is one of 23 concepts that received part of a $7 million investment through NIAC. The Phase I award consists of $125,000 to fund a nine-month study of the idea. Other concepts include investigating solar sails, lunar landing pads and a robotic explorer for Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA pointed out that these projects will mostly require a decade or more of technology development, and that they are not official NASA missions.
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NASA Contemplates Turning a Moon Crater Into a Giant, Powerful Telescope More

NASA Contemplates Turning a Moon Crater Into a Giant, Powerful Telescope

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  • Technical challenges (Score:3)

    by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Thursday April 09, 2020 @03:12AM (#59924276)

    Just controlling the robots would have some interesting technical challenges. I suppose the first thing to do would be to put a satellite or two in Moon orbit to use as relay stations?

    • Not really a challenge. China already put a relay sat into an Earth-Moon Lagrange point to communicate with their farside rover. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Not really a challenge. China already put a relay sat into an Earth-Moon Lagrange point to communicate with their farside rover.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Correct. And it was considered in the Apollo programme, should NASA have had the occasion to make a far side mission.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      ...or lay down a fiber optic on the ground to reach an antenna on the visible side. Not that far-fetched, a thin fiber a thousand km long can weight only a few tons.
      Source: I propose a similar projects years ago to communicate from South Pole (unreachable via geosync sats) to Dome C via a fiber directly on the snow.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        ...or lay down a fiber optic on the ground to reach an antenna on the visible side. Not that far-fetched, a thin fiber a thousand km long can weight only a few tons.

        Well, so far the distance record for a rover is 45 km for Opportunity. The Apollo rover went no more than 35 km. So just going the distance would be novel. The biggest rovers to date (Curiosity, Lunokhod 2) are ~900 kg, so you'd have to scale way up for "a few tons". Apparently naked fiber is susceptible to UV degradation and you'd have a full blast of that so it needs either burial or shielding. Not sure how it'd like the daily wild temperature swings either. My biggest concern would be maintainability th

        • Not sure how it'd like the daily wild temperature swings either.

          Monthly

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Kjella ( 173770 )

            Doh. You're right, was drawing too many parallels to Mars there. Of course it's not like /. has an edit button, but if anyone has mod points mod parent up.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Some sort of thicker, warmer and very UV resistant coating? Like for aerial fiber optic cable. But moon ready.
            • Or just use Moon soil to cover it? I mean, it's a "loose silt" from what the Apollo astronauts recounted as they traversed it so I'd imagine you might be able to trench it easily, but honestly - I am not fully versed on engineering materials or methods in such extremes -- just pitching my two cents.
              • Having classmates who spent decades running "trenching machines" for burying just the data cables you describe in the bottom of various seas (to avoid iceberg gouge, trawler drag, anchor slip, that sort of thing ...), trenching machines are complex, heavy and break down relatively often.

                And a 500km reel of fiber-optic cable with appropriate armour requires a special-build crane to handle it (where off-the shelf cranes handle 30 to 50 tonnes).

                All that is optimisable, but you're looking at a substantial dev

          • For the Moon, daily and monthly are the same thing. There's no point in differentiating the two measures.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Many 200kg trips with quality fiber connections made each stop?

    • Re:Technical challenges (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Thursday April 09, 2020 @04:15AM (#59924368) Journal

      One challenge there is that there aren't any stable orbits close to the moon, because the moon is "lumpy" density-wise, so you need station-keep fuel. But maybe the sats don't need to be too close, just have continuous LOS. If the telescope will be on the far side of the moon, they'd need 3 sats, but compared to the overall project maybe that's not unreasonable.

      One problem for a telescope in general is tracking: you'd need a fully motorized installation, and motors aren't easy to keep working in a vacuum. Moon dust would be an issue as well, as it's very abrasive and it's hard to seal out around a joint.

      I suspect the project would end up being more valuable as a study in making durable robots for those conditions, while keeping costs at all practical, than the telescope itself. Obviously designing along the lines of the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover won't do.

      • We will need the orbits last enough to build the telescope, and just make sure if they crash on the moon. they don't crash on the telescope. You may not have a stable orbit like on the earth, but you might be able to get it good enough for the job.
        However, I would just place a few hundred relays towers so there is a transmission from earth to the back of the moon. Luckily the moon is locked to face the earth. So you just need one row of relays.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jwdb ( 526327 )

        From the reference to a "wire mesh", sounds like this will be a radio telescope rather than an optical one. In that case, you can do tracking with a phased array - no moving parts required.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      If only NASA could find some really smart Germans with engineering skills again.
      To get humans back on the "Moon".

      • Or just people interested in Rocket Science.

        Americans are unfortunately too economy-focused, so the bulk of them will study areas that will get them Jobs. They may focus on Jet Population, but not rockets. As there are far more diverse set of jobs for Jets vs Rockets. Especially if the person doesn't want to work for the military.

        During WWII Rocket and Jet propulsion was cutting edge stuff. So when peacetime came, and the allies won the war, they pooled the American and German experts for the space progr

        • With private rockets becoming more common and with potentially good competition (Blue Origin) coupled with the recent executive order stating space rocks can be mined for profit. I want to believe we are at the dawn of a new frontier for economic investment like we saw in the early 90's and the internet. I do think it's more akin to the internet than COBOL. Mostly operated by governments and educational institutions until the 90's when the flood gates were opened to private investment and operation. The int

  • If you're concerned about EMF from Earth (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Thursday April 09, 2020 @03:46AM (#59924328)

    Do you have to make sure that orbits of relay satellites and other Moon to Earth communication systems avoid the area of the telescope?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Yes but it's not difficult to do. The orbits are known, they can be switched to silent as they pass over the spot being viewed.

      It's not like Earth where you have a huge amount of EMF noise from many sources, all bouncing around inside the ionosphere.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re "The orbits are known".. to the Germans working in the USA around 1950 to 1970.
        Todays top space experts have problems with metric and imperial units.
  • Let's get the James Webb telescope up in space first, OK?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Like the summary alluded to, this isn't a mission. It's not a mission proposal. It's not a design proposal. For what would surely be a billion dollar project $125k is little more than a draft concept study of whether such a project might be interesting enough for an in-depth study. NASA heard the elevator pitch, their interest was piqued enough to want a more detailed write-up but it's not competing with JWST in any way. At least one should bloody well hope not, though I'm not taking any bets until it's act

    • Let's get the James Webb telescope up in space first, OK?

      I totally agree. But the Dark Side of the Moon -- when it's dark -- could be better than the back side of a probe?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by idji ( 984038 )
      This is a different team, different generation - one has nothing to do with the other. These people will be all 30 years younger than the Webbites!

  • Proof = the uncanny reassemblence
    https://www.starwars.com/datab... [starwars.com]

  • 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.

    This is not the only thing the Moon is good at shielding...

    Lets hope they choose a crater with minimum probability of being constantly hit by meteorites, because the Moon were always a good target for this kind of "rain".

    • The cross-section of the Moon to impactors, when adjusted for the relative gravity fields, is about 1/20 that of the Earth. So the level of protection the Moon dish would need is on the order of 20 times what is needed on the Earth.

      For the sort of design they're talking about, I'd say that a robot with spiked wheels that can carry a patch of the mesh material around on the mesh, a supply of patches, and a supply of clips for holding the mesh patch in place at about the strength of the original mesh ... wou

  • shielding (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Thursday April 09, 2020 @05:38AM (#59924508) Homepage
    But wouldn't the telescope be extra vulnerable to small meteor hits?

    • The proposed dish is 1 kilometer wide. The rate of tiny meteor hits in that small an area is going to be quite low, probably decades before anything significant has to be fixed. I couldn't find exact numbers, but here's some ballpark ideas [forbes.com] showing how infrequent meterites are on the moon.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Some sort of dome to protect the huge lens when not in use?
      • The design under consideration is a radio telescope, not an optical one. So, if you're looking at 2mm wavelength radio, a wire mesh of 1/2mm should be sufficient.

        Actually, having just thought about it for long enough to have a shit, plastic film printed on one or both sides with a mesh pattern and a conductive glue (not weaker than the film itself, but not hugely stronger) would do the job and be repairable in a planned-shutdown manner. The interesting question is if the metamaterial-printed films proposed

  • This makes me thing that someday, not in my lifetime, humans will install a dish/scope into the "death ray" crater on Mimas.

  • "NASA is only doing this to make it more difficult for Jason Momoa and Tulsi Gabbard to protest the project."

  • We're rocketing the tax money from people off to the moon so we can observe distant galaxies?

    Why can't we let people keep their money? At least it will benefit someone.

  • Sounds remarkably like a giant version of the Arecibo radio observatory. Easier in a way due to the much lower gravity. Would take a lot of material for the reflector unless it was something like those solar sails. No weather also a big help. Yes, communication to operate the thing would be a headache, but there are many ways to solve it. And this would not be affected by the LEO internet satellites that we are being graced with. And shielded from the usual chatter, something new might be learned.

  • Radio scope is easy to do, but we need to also do a light scope.
    James web scope has been a disaster, BUT, it has the perfect build features for doing in a lunar crater. Basically, it can be brought in parts and put together.
  • A Farside facility has been in SF since the 50's. Not sure Arthur C Clark mentioned it, but thousands of SF stories have included a Farside facility for research. Be nice if feasible. Thomas, DeSoto, TX

  • The Saha Crater Radioastronomic and SETI Observatory

    https://link.springer.com/chap... [springer.com]

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