Plan for Telescopes on Moon's Far Side Is Revived

A schematic of time since the Big Bang. (Courtesy of NASA )

On the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth, the telescopes would be protected from both types of radio interference.

To pick up the distant pulses, both teams envision placing a large number of modest antennas across a crater floor. While the MIT team is working on the pop-out antennas, which would transmit their data to receivers using laser technology, the Naval Research Laboratory plan calls for an array of similarly small antennas implanted in a thin polyimide film.

Burns said that he has worked with NASA on a prototype that could be placed by astronauts near the moon's south pole not long after the astronauts establish a settlement, but that a larger and far more powerful array would have to wait until NASA has more access to, and a better understanding of, the far side of the moon.

The early prototypes would not be able to gaze far into the past but could be useful for studying space weather, especially the enormous and powerful solar eruptions called coronal mass ejections. Those eruptions can disrupt communications and electrical grids on Earth and could be dangerous to astronauts on the moon or in space.

Both teams have one-year grants to develop their telescope arrays and have been encouraged to work together. According to Eric Smith, a project manager at NASA who helped select the two projects, strong support for the idea of placing a radio telescope array on the moon originated at a meeting of space scientists last year in Tempe, Ariz.

"One of the issues at the meeting was that if NASA is going back to the moon, what would we like to do there?" Smith said. "The astrophysicist group made their proposal to look at the very early universe, and that got a lot of support."

The two teams will present their proposals to a panel of the National Research Council, which will help set priorities for NASA funding in the next decade. If NASA gives the go-ahead, the researchers said, a radio telescope array on the far side of the moon would take years to develop and could cost about $1 billion.

Burns said he is encouraged.

"The far side of the moon is the quietest place in the inner solar system in terms of radio waves," he said. "If we could get a radio telescope working there, the results could be very dramatic."