NASA has issued a new round of grants for its upcoming innovative space projects – one of them is a plan to install a radio telescope 1 kilometer in diameter in a crater on the dark side of the moon.
The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) could measure wavelengths and frequencies that cannot be detected from Earth, operating unhindered by the ionosphere or various other parts of the radio noise surrounding our planet.
If plans for the LCRT become a reality – and new grants may bring us closer to that – it will be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the solar system.
“The LCRT could make huge scientific discoveries in the field of cosmology by observing the early Universe in a wavelength range of 10-50 m (frequency band 6-30 MHz), which has not yet been explored by humans,” writes technologist Saptarshi Bandyopadhaya of the Jet Laboratory NASA Movement (JPL).
According to plans, a wire mesh with a diameter of about 1 kilometer should be placed in the crater of the Moon. A pendant receiver in the center of the crater will shut down the system.
Everything can be automated without any human operators, which in turn means a lighter and less expensive payload for the project.
The project is still in its very early stages of planning, and it is not yet clear which crater will be used for the work, but it is an intriguing concept that we will be following in the coming years.
Sources: Photo: NASA / Saptarshi Bandyopadhya
