Conceptual ideas for radio telescope on the far side of the moon

Abstract

A radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon has tremendous advantages compared to Earth-based telescopes because it could observe the universe at wavelengths that are hitherto poorly explored by humans so far and the Moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the telescope from the radio interference and noises from Earth. This paper presents a novel concept for building a radio telescope on the far-side of the Moon. The main idea is to shape a suitable existing lunar crater (1 - 50km in diameter) on the far-side of the Moon into a spherical reflecting dish. The proposed Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) would be able to observe the universe in the 5-100m wavelength band (i.e., 3 - 60MHz radio frequency band). The key innovations of this concept are: (1) LCRT will be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System. (2) LCRT could potentially make tremendous scientific discoveries in fields of cosmology and extrasolar planets by observing the universe in the 5 - 100m λ band (i.e., 3 - 60MHz ν band) that has been hitherto poorly explored. (3) It would require only a few robots from Earth and autonomously modify an existing lunar crater to build the LCRT; thereby significantly reducing launch weight and cost compared to all previous lunar-surface telescope mission concepts. (4) Furthermore, the Earth-based robots are not consumed during construction of LCRT. Therefore, they could create a network of LCRTs to (i) observe different regions of the universe, and (ii) enable lunar Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) astronomy. We envisage that this concept would unlock the potential for ground-breaking scientific discoveries in radio astronomy.