Nasa wants to turn the Moon into a telescope that can see BACK in time before humans existed
NASA has given out some new grants for innovative space projects.
Perhaps the wildest of the chosen projects is a plan to put a radio telescope on the Moon that could give us a glimpse of some of the earliest moments after the Big Bang.
The Nasa supported project aims to put a 3,281 foot radio telescope within a crater on the far side of the Moon.
A move that could end up with the Moon looking a bit like the Death Star from Star Wars.
Radio telescope dishes need to be a curved parabolic shape to capture waves and reflect them to a receiver at the centre.
This is why a crater would make a perfect natural dish and would require less equipment and construction in space.
According to the project team, this open radio telescope would be the largest in the Solar System.
Placing tech like this on the lunar surface instead of Earth apparently has "tremendous advantages".
The concept is being called the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT).
The researchers think they could use it to observe the Universe in a lot more detail because Earth's atmosphere and radio noise wouldn't be getting in the way.
Scientists think the telescope could essentially help us look back in time to the earliest moments in the Universe.
They think it could help them to learn how the universe inflated within a second after the Big Bang.
This is because the Big Bang is thought to have left behind faint 'fingerprints' on the cosmos that can't currently be detected by radio telescopes on Earth.
Plans for building the telescope involve robots putting a 0.6 mile diameter wire-mesh across a crater.
In the centre of the crater would be a suspended receiver that could pick up frequencies.
It could even be maintained by astronauts eventually as Nasa plans to build an Artemis Base Camp on the Moon.
Nasa said: "This Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), with 0.6 mile diameter, will be the largest filled-aperture radio telescope in the Solar System.
"LCRT could enable tremendous scientific discoveries in the field of cosmology by observing the early universe in the 10– 50m wavelength band (i.e., 6–30MHz frequency band), which has not been explored by humans to-date."
Nasa has put $125,000 (£100,900) towards the project and the researchers now have nine months to see if they can develop it.
The Moon – our closest neighbour explained
Here's what you need to know...
- The Moon is a natural satellite – a space-faring body that orbits a planet
- It's Earth's only natural satellite, and is the fifth biggest in the Solar System
- The Moon measures 2,158 miles across, roughly 0.27 times the diameter of Earth
- Temperatures on the Moon range from minus 173 degrees Celcius to 260 degrees Celcius
- Experts assumed the Moon was another planet, until Nicolaus Copernicus outlined his theory about our Solar System in 1543
- It was eventually assigned to a "class" after Galileo discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610
- The Moon is believed to have formed around 4.51billion years ago
- The strength of its gravitational field is about a sixth of Earth's gravity
- Earth and the Moon have "synchronous rotation", which means we always see the same side of the Moon – hence the phrase "dark side of the Moon"
- The Moon's surface is actually dark, but appears bright in the sky due to its reflective ground
- During a solar eclipse, the Moon covers the Sun almost completely. Both objects appear a similar size in the sky because the Sun is both 400 times larger and farther
- The first spacecraft to reach the Moon was in 1959, as part of the Soviet Union's Lunar program
- The first manned orbital mission was Nasa's Apollo 8 in 1968
- And the first manned lunar landing was in 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission
In other space news, the closest ever image of a violent jet spewing out of a supermassive black hole has been revealed.
A huge 2-mile asteroid will be visible from Earth this month.
Nasa has revealed some of its plans for colonising the Moon.
Would you want to live on the Moon? Let us know in the comments...
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