February 5 (UPI) — NASA will conduct science experiments on the Moon in 2024 for the first time since 1972. Thanks to new technologies and public-private partnerships, these projects will open new areas of scientific possibilities. As part of several projects launched this year, teams of scientists, including myself, will conduct radio astronomy from the south pole and the far side of the moon.
NASA’s commercial lunar payload services program will use uncrewed landers to conduct NASA’s first science experiments from the moon in more than 50 years. The CLPS program is different from past space programs. Instead of NASA building the landers and running the program, commercial companies will do it in public-private partnerships. NASA has identified nearly a dozen companies that will serve as suppliers of lunar landers.
NASA buys space on these landers for science payloads to fly to the moon, and companies design, build and insure the landers, as well as contract with rocket companies for the launches. Unlike in the past, NASA is one of the customers, not the sole driver.
Launch of CLPS
The first two CLPS payloads are planned to be launched in the first two months of 2024. The Astrobotics payload was launched on January 8 before experiencing a fuel problem that shortened its journey to the moon. Next up is the Intuitive Machines payload, scheduled for release in mid-February. NASA also planned several additional landings, approximately two or three per year, for each of the next few years.
I am a radio astronomer and co-investigator on NASA’s ROLSES program, also known as PhotoElectron Sheath Radio Wave Observations on the Lunar Surface. ROLSES was built by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and is led by Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy.
The ROLSES device will be released alongside Intuitive Machines in February. Between ROLSES and LuSEE-Night, another mission planned for the far side of the Moon in two years, our teams will land NASA’s first two radio telescopes on the moon by 2026.
Radio telescopes on the Moon
The moon, especially the far side of the moon, is an ideal place to perform radio astronomy and study signals from extraterrestrial objects such as the sun and the Milky Way galaxy. The ionosphere, which contains the Earth’s magnetic field, distorts and absorbs radio signals below the FM band. These signals may be interfered with or may not reach the Earth’s surface.
There are also sound-producing TV signals, satellite broadcasts and defense radar systems in the world. To make higher-precision observations, you need to go into space, far from Earth.
The Moon is what scientists call tidally locked. One side of the moon always faces the Earth (the “man in the moon” side) and the other side, the far side, always faces away from the Earth. The Moon has no ionosphere, and since there are approximately 3200 kilometers of rock between the Earth and the far side of the Moon, there is no interference. The radio is silent.
For our first mission with ROLSES, starting this month, we will collect data on environmental conditions near the moon’s south pole. On the lunar surface, the solar wind directly hits the lunar surface, creating a charged gas called plasma. Electrons lift off from the negatively charged surface to form a highly ionized gas.
This does not happen on Earth because the magnetic field deflects the solar wind. However, there is no global magnetic field on the moon. We’ll be able to measure this plasma for the first time with a low-frequency radio telescope like ROLSES, which could help scientists understand how to keep astronauts safe on the moon.
Astronauts take on different loads as they roam the surface of the moon. It’s like walking on the carpet with your socks on; When you reach for a doorknob, a spark may fly from your finger. The same type of discharge of charged gas occurs on the Moon, but it is potentially more harmful to astronauts.
Solar, exoplanet radio emissions
Our team will also use ROLSES to look at the sun. The Sun’s surface emits shock waves that send out high-energy particles and low radio frequency emissions. We will use radio telescopes to measure these emissions and see bursts of low-frequency radio waves resulting from shock waves in the solar wind.
We will also study Earth from the surface of the moon and use this process as a template to look at radio emissions from exoplanets that may harbor life in other star systems.
Magnetic fields are important for life because they protect the planet’s surface from the solar/stellar wind.
In the future, our team hopes to use special antenna arrays on the far side of the moon to observe nearby star systems known to have exoplanets. If we detect the same type of radio emissions coming from Earth, this will tell us that the planet has a magnetic field. And by measuring the strength of the magnetic field, we can understand whether it is strong enough to protect life.
cosmology on the moon
The Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment at Night, or LuSEE-Night, will fly to the far side of the moon in early 2026. LuSEE-Night marks scientists’ first attempt to do cosmology on the moon.
LuSEE-Night is a new collaboration between NASA and the Department of Energy. The data will be sent back to Earth using the Lunar Pathfinder, a communications satellite in lunar orbit funded by the European Space Agency.
The far side of the moon is unique in terms of radio frequency, making it the best place to make cosmological observations. During the two-week lunar night, which occurs every 14 days, there is no emission from the sun and there is no ionosphere.
We hope to study an unexplored part of the early universe called the dark ages. The dark ages refer to the period before and just after the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the universe, and this is beyond what the James Webb Space Telescope can examine.
During the dark ages, the age of the universe was less than 100 million years; Today, the universe is 13.7 billion years old. In the dark ages, the universe was full of hydrogen. This hydrogen propagates through the universe at low radio frequencies, and when new stars open up they ionize the hydrogen, producing a radio signature in the spectrum. Our team hopes to measure this signal and learn how the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe formed.
There is also a lot of potential new physics we can study in this last unexplored cosmological epoch in the universe. We will investigate the nature of dark matter and early dark energy, and test our models of fundamental physics and cosmology in an undiscovered era.
This process will begin in 2026 with the LuSEE-Night mission, which is both a fundamental physics experiment and a cosmology experiment.
Jack Burns is a professor of astrophysics and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The views and opinions expressed in this review are solely those of the author.