Space scientists are keen to preserve the option of doing astronomy from the moon.
There are plans to place astronomical hardware on the lunar surface, such as supercooled infrared telescopes, an array of gravitational wave detectors, large Arecibo-like radio telescopes, and even “peek-a-boo” instruments tuned to look for evidence. Aliens “out there”.
Yes, the future of lunar astronomy is beckoning. But some scientists say there is an urgent need to protect any astronomy equipment located on the Moon from interference caused by other activities planned on the Moon, ensuring that such equipment can fulfill its mission of investigating the surrounding universe.
To this end, efforts to formulate policy and expand coverage are ongoing with the United Nations in the hope of increasing international support for such protections.
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global agreements
This action plan is spearheaded by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The IAU brings together more than 12,000 active professional astronomers from more than 100 countries around the world.
Richard Green is president of the IAU group looking at issues related to staging astronomy from the moon. He is also associate director for government relations at the Steward Observatory, run by the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Green told Space.com that the IAU working group aims to collaborate with a number of other non-governmental organizations to preserve the option of performing astronomy from the moon.
Some of the participants in the IAU working group are spectrum managers of radio observatories that are strongly affiliated with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the ITU’s World Radiocommunication Conference, a treaty-level forum for reviewing and, where necessary, revising radio regulations and global agreements. on the use of the radio frequency spectrum and geostationary and non-geostationary satellite orbits.
Working group members wanted to maximize the range of frequencies preserved, “including the very low frequencies needed to study the early universe and light emissions from planets,” Green says.
fair access
Another approach is to preserve regions on the moon that might be suitable for cooled infrared telescopes or gravitational wave detector arrays, Green says.
“We have common cause with those who want to preserve historical heritage sites and even those who want private areas for extracting water or minerals,” says Green. “We think the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is the place to develop some processes for protecting an area and resolving competing claims.”
IAU Astronomy, from the Moon working group, has space law and policy experts who can provide a strong foundation for this approach, says Green.
“The main goal, of course, is to perform astronomical observations that can uniquely be made from the moon,” explains Green. The working group embraces the expertise of principal investigators on lunar missions or mission concepts.
Doing so, Green says, could help the astronomy community prioritize areas of extreme scientific interest and address issues of conducting science in an environment of “equitable access” based on the spirit of the United Nations 1967 Outer Space Convention.
clearly necessary
The person who fully endorses the IAU initiative is Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College in London.
“In my view, a subset of certain locations on the Moon, such as certain polar craters and important far-rim locations, should be designated as ‘Places of Special Scientific Interest’ and protected as such,” Crawford told Space.com.
Crawford suggests that one possible model could be Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs), defined in Annex V of the Antarctic Treaty Environmental Protocol.
“In any case, international coordination is clearly necessary for United Nations involvement to appear fully appropriate,” says Crawford.
private partnerships
NASA is working with several US companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
Given the increase in future CLPS-supported robotic lunar exploration, we are about to see the first NASA-funded science payloads land here in more than 51 years—since Apollo 17’s manned lunar landing in December 1972, says retired professor Jack Burns. Department of astrophysics and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
One of the payloads on which Burns served as co-investigator is called PhotoElectron Sheath Radio Wave Observations on the Lunar Surface (ROLSES). If successful, it will be the first radio telescope on the Moon and will be located at the Moon’s south pole. ROLSES will be deployed there in February via the IM-1 mission of the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander under the CLPS partnership.
This will be followed within two years by the Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment Night, or LuSEE-Night, which is scheduled to fly aboard the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-2 lander in 2026. This effort is also part of the CLPS initiative, and Burns is a science team member of the LUNAR far-side experiment.
LuSee-Night is a radio telescope that will peer into the never-before-seen dark ages of the early universe, the period before the birth of the first stars.
science fact
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With this potential and promising development of lunar radio astronomy, Burns says, “It is crucial that we now develop international agreements to preserve the far side of the moon for radio astronomy because it is the only truly radio-quiet region in the inner solar system.”
Burns emphasizes that radio observations from the moon are no longer science fiction, but scientific fact.
“We are entering a new era in science exploration of our closest neighbor in space,” says Burns.