A radio telescope will be installed beyond the moon in 2026.Lunar Electromagnetic Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night)IEEE Spectrum, a web media operated by the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), has summarized why a radio telescope is installed beyond the moon and what kind of results this mission is expected to bring.
Lunar radio telescope reveals the mysteries of the universe – IEEE Spectrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/lunar-radio-telescope
In 1979, Jack Burns, then an astronomer who had just graduated from graduate school, discovered radio jets in the far reaches of the Milky Way.Kusa AAn observation facility located in the high desert of New Mexico to conduct research onSuper large interferometric radio telescope groupHowever, even the super-large interferometric radio telescopes of the time were not completely immune to radio interference, and problems arose as Earth’s protective atmosphere and ionosphere blocked many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Under such circumstances, Mr. Burns was told by Mr. Wendel Mendel, a former planetary scientist at NASA, “How about installing a radio telescope on the moon?” After receiving this request, my approach to space radio telescopes changed. After that, Mr. Burns spent 40 years going to NASA, the Department of Energy, etc., and while submitting more than 500 reviewed papers on radio telescopes, he promoted a project to install a radio telescope on the moon.
Finally, in 2026, the radio telescope “LuSEE-Night” will be launched beyond the lunar surface. “It’s been a long time,” said Burns, 73 years old at the time of writing and a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder. “You still see we don’t lack heart.” “You see we don’t lack ambition.”
LuSEE-Night was launched on a SpaceX rocket and then became a landing craft for the American private space company Firefly Aerospace.blue ghost lunar lander“Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost will be the second civilian spacecraft to arrive on the other side of the moon in March 2025.”Successful landing on the moonThis is the second mission that includes the launch of LuSEE-Night.
– Artist: Firefly Aerospace
Radio telescopes placed beyond the moon could more reliably observe dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, and gravitational waves, potentially solving some of the biggest mysteries in space science.dark agesIn addition, Greg Hallinan, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology and co-researcher of LuSEE-Night, believes that telescopic radio waves on the moon are necessary to observe electromagnetic activity around exoplanets.
One of the challenges when researching these mysteries is that very old and weak radio waves are easily erased by communication networks, power grids, radars, etc. on Earth.
This is where “Beyond the Moon” draws attention. Because the moon faces the same direction toward the earth, the area beyond the moon is protected from radio interference emitted from the earth. In addition, during the 14-day night when the sun sets below the lunar horizon, no radio waves from the Earth or the sun are visible, making it electromagnetically darker than anywhere else in the solar system. “When you reach very low radio frequencies, noise related to the solar wind appears.The only place within 1 billion km of the Earth that you can escape from this noise is on the night side of the moon.When the solar wind blows through, it creates a cavity that protects the vigilance from the noise.”
LuSEE-Night includes twodipole antennaare placed in opposite directions. The antenna can withstand the Moon’s astonishing temperature changes while providing high continuity and stability.beryllium copperMade of alloy, each antenna extends up to 6m.
The volume of the turntable is 1m3It is located on a box with weak support equipment, and the total weight is kept below 120 kg. The radio waves generated in the early universe were approximatelyisotropicOn the other hand, radio waves emitted from a specific galaxy or interstellar gas cloud are likely to arrive from a specific direction, so it is possible to distinguish between old and new radio waves by rotating a turntable.
by University of California Space Science Institute
Blue Ghost Mission 2, which includes the launch of LuSEE-Night, is scheduled to arrive at the landing site beyond the moon after the sun has risen. After landing, the spacecraft will spend two weeks inspecting and photographing the spacecraft, experimenting with other equipment onboard Blue Ghost, and recharging the LuSEE-Night battery pack using solar panels. Then, after the sun sets, we will turn off all power except LuSEE-Night’s receiver and immediate support systems, and observe with as little radio interference as possible.
Particularly important for the LuSEE-Night mission is to be able to withstand overwhelming temperature changes beyond the moon and continue observations. To block heat during the day, LuSEE-Night has a multi-cell parabolic heat dissipation panel installed on the outside of the case containing the equipment, and uses a large capacity battery power source to keep it warm at night. – Approximately 38 kg of the 108 kg night launch weight is the 7160 watt-hour lithium-ion battery, whose main role is heat generation at night. The battery is charged by solar panels during the day, but even the spectrometer, which is an important piece of equipment, is regularly turned off at night to ensure that the battery’s state of charge does not drop below 8%. Spectrum points out, “Even a little observation time is better than having to endure the entire instrument and not be able to recover.”
If LuSEE-Night is successful, interest in a more ambitious lunar radio telescope will increase. Mr. Burns, Mr. Hari Nunn and others have already traveled approximately 200 km.2We have obtained initial funding for FarView, a radio telescope array consisting of 100,000 dipole antennas that will be installed in the future. FarView will use aluminum extracted from lunar soil, and construction could begin as early as the 2030s.
Mr. Burns has worked diligently to establish a lunar observatory through the terms of ten NASA and seven U.S. presidents. Burns admitted to IEEE Spectrum that the lunar observatory took longer than expected, but said in a cheerful tone, “Think about it.
Copy the title and URL of this article