NASA wants to go to Moon, and astrophysicists also want their instruments to travel.
The details are still changing, as scientists are discovering what makes the most sense given the moon’s scientific and logistical limitations. But they are confident that NASA’s current priorities on the moon offer benefits that would support its goals. The agency’s priorities are embodied by the Artemis Program, which aims to land humans on the moon in 2024 in a long-term sustainable way that offers a future for science and exploration.
“Heavy launch ability, astronauts, serviceability, assembly in space – all of those things are things that interest us deeply,” said Heidi Hammel, planetary astronomer at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy during the Virtual Science Workshop of the Lunar Surface celebrated on May 28. “And they are a central part of the return to the moon initiative.”
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Some telescopes have already operated on the moon. From nasa Apollo 16 The mission in 1972 carried an ultraviolet telescope that astronaut John Young used to take pictures of Earth’s nebulae, stars, and atmosphere. From China Chang’e-3 mission, which landed on the moon in 2013, also carried an ultraviolet telescope.
But the moon is generally new territory for telescopes, Hammel said, and details of how astrophysicists could take advantage of the Artemis program have yet to be determined. An important distinction can be between telescopes in the moon and telescopes to Moon. This is because even ground dust is a problem for delicate astronomy teams, and moon dust is a problem. much more aggravating than its earthly counterpart.
That said, it is not impossible to imagine telescopes thriving on the lunar surface, Hammel said. She pointed to a volcanic mountain in the heart of the island of Hawaii, Maunakea. Today he is known for dozens of astronomy facilities perched on top of the mountain, where the atmosphere is still and the observation conditions are favorable. But in the 1960s, it was a key training site for Apollo-era astronauts who practiced moonwalking and geology.
“Maunakea was a testing ground for [the] “The lunar exploration program,” said Hammel. “If we have not learned anything in the last 50 years … we have learned how to build telescopes in that type of environment.” Those lessons, he said, can be applied to any instrument that does. it needs to be placed on the lunar surface.
Also, astronomers have learned a lot about launching telescopes into space since the days of that first lunar telescope. Space and ground telescopes alike have improved exponentially. Consider the power of Hubble space telescope, which, as future lunar orbit telescopes could do, has relied on visits from astronauts to upgrade its equipment as it aged.
And while a launch to the moon would require smaller instruments than astronomers on Earth’s surface, frequent visits to the moon that are intended to be the trademark of the Artemis program suggest that scientists may send larger telescopes than They must date.
Assuming that scientists can send more mass, keep instruments cooler with astronaut maintenance, and solve dust challenges, what kind of instruments could they send?
Astronomers have a lot of ideas about what they could do with radio telescopes on the moon because such instruments face great limitation on Earth. The constant barrage of radio signals we generate with our group of electronic equipment on the surface and in orbit wreaks havoc on radio observations made from Earth, and the far side of the moon it is the only place in the solar system safe from those signs.
That interference means that scientists have spent decades imagining the potential of radio observatories on the other side. Such instruments could see the first days of the universe or hear signals produced by a hypothetical extraterrestrial techno-civilization, for example.
But for other wavelengths, the lunar possibilities are a little less obvious, particularly with just the precedent for a pair of ultraviolet instruments to work with, Hammel said. “One of the reasons we have a lot going back and forth about placing telescopes on the moon [is that] The state of the art on the ground, on Earth and in space has advanced so much over the past 50 years that we find it difficult to imagine what we would put on the surface in ultraviolet radiation. [ultraviolet] and optical and near infrared, “said Hammel.” It’s hard to imagine what we would need to build there. “
He noted that a compelling opportunity would be to look at Earth from the moon as a practice to study worlds beyond our solar system. Exoplanets they are compelling scientific goals, but at such great distances scientists struggle to understand the details of these worlds and to closely interpret how they might look.
“It won’t matter if it’s a small telescope, because exoplanets, we really can’t solve them anyway,” Hammel said. “Being able to study Earth in multiple phases, multiple wavelengths, over very long periods of time and short periods of time, will give us really powerful information for understanding Earth-like exoplanets.”
Hammel said ultraviolet observations in general they are tempting, since such wavelengths cannot be studied from the Earth’s surface. The same atmosphere that protects life on Earth from being fried by ultraviolet radiation also prevents terrestrial telescopes from studying astronomical ultraviolet radiation. But there is no atmosphere to interfere with the moon.
Although astrophysicists are still gathering the details of what lunar observatories might look like, the community is already on board the Artemis program. The first two robotic science charging charges that commercial companies will deliver to the lunar surface As part of the program, which will launch next year, two astrophysics projects are included, including a radio astronomy experiment.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us On twitter @Spacedotcom and in Facebook.
