Is it really necessary to have a lander to perform radio-astronomic observations in moon's shadow? Isn't it easier to have an orbiting spacecraft instead and perform observation while it's orbiting behind the moon?
There is perhaps some extra opportunity in a 10-14 day solid observation window, but I don't see why a satellite version couldn't still work in smaller windows.
Another reason could be testing for building a much large radio antenna on the moon's surface in the future which is mentioned to farther down in the article. The moon itself and it's dust has electromagnetic effects that might effect measurements and learning about them now could help future planning.
You'd build an array (see e.g. VLA mentioned in the article or SKA), and it is much easier to combine the data from an array if everything isn't flying around and so there are varying distances between the antennae.
Very readable explanation of why and how useful a dark-side lunar radio telescope would be.
TLDR: As a result of expansion of the universe, over 13B years the wavelength of neutral hydrogen signals has been stretched from 21cm to 'tens of meters'. On Earth, this part of the spectrum is cluttered with noise from Earth and Sun. For 14 days at a time...not a problem on the dark-side.
Is it really necessary to have a lander to perform radio-astronomic observations in moon's shadow? Isn't it easier to have an orbiting spacecraft instead and perform observation while it's orbiting behind the moon?
There is perhaps some extra opportunity in a 10-14 day solid observation window, but I don't see why a satellite version couldn't still work in smaller windows.
Another reason could be testing for building a much large radio antenna on the moon's surface in the future which is mentioned to farther down in the article. The moon itself and it's dust has electromagnetic effects that might effect measurements and learning about them now could help future planning.
You'd build an array (see e.g. VLA mentioned in the article or SKA), and it is much easier to combine the data from an array if everything isn't flying around and so there are varying distances between the antennae.
Very readable explanation of why and how useful a dark-side lunar radio telescope would be.
TLDR: As a result of expansion of the universe, over 13B years the wavelength of neutral hydrogen signals has been stretched from 21cm to 'tens of meters'. On Earth, this part of the spectrum is cluttered with noise from Earth and Sun. For 14 days at a time...not a problem on the dark-side.
It’s far side, not dark side. The moon doesn’t have a dark side anymore than the earth does