NASA Reveals Wild Project For Turning a Moon Crater Into a Radio Telescope
NASA just gave out a new round of grants for its favourite up and coming innovative space projects – one of which is a plan to fit a 1 kilometre (3,281 foot) radio telescope inside a crater on the far side of the Moon.
The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) would be able to measure wavelengths and frequencies that can't be detected from Earth, working unobstructed by the ionosphere or the various other bits of radio noise surrounding our planet.
Should the plans for the LCRT become a reality – and the new grant money could get it closer to that – it would be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System.
Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Myfyr on Thursday April 09 2020, @10:43PM
In this case the telescope is a wire mesh, so no building required . Using a bunch of rovers to deploy, and then anchor and suspend, a pre-built wire mesh from the edges of a crater is orders of magnitude easier than erecting anything. Which makes this look quite interesting, since it might actually happen in the somewhat near future. Fingers crossed.