Scientists and Engineers Craft Radio Telescope Bound for the Moon
With all major telescope components completed, the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night is now undergoing final assembly
enlarge LuSEE-Night undergoes final assembly at the Space Sciences Laboratory, following the completion of all major components by Brookhaven Lab and other collaborators. (Space Sciences Laboratory)
UPTON, N.Y. — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has completed the “major item of equipment” phase for the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night), a moon-based radio telescope set to make history.
Comprising the overall design of the telescope as well as the procurement and construction of its components, this project phase was a significant undertaking. Scientists, engineers, and technicians were tasked with developing a one-of-a-kind scientific instrument with strict, and often competing, mass and energy consumption limits for each component. The successful completion of the phase marks a substantial scientific and engineering achievement — and a key milestone for the entire LuSEE-Night project.
“I’m really proud of what the team managed to build,” said Gabriella Carini, associate laboratory director for the Discovery Technologies Directorate at Brookhaven Lab. “With DOE’s support, we’ve built a telescope that I think truly advances the state of the art in the nascent field of space-based radio astronomy.”
The allure of the Dark Ages
LuSEE-Night’s complex design empowers the telescope to survive in an infamously inhospitable place: the lunar far side. Named for its inability to be seen from Earth, this area of the moon sits in total darkness for 14 Earth days followed by 14 days of brutal sunlight. Without an atmosphere, temperatures swing from -280 to 280 degrees Fahrenheit and there’s no protection from cosmic radiation. It’s a treacherous environment for scientific equipment to survive in, and few prior missions have been able to operate there for more than one lunar day.
But in exchange for harsh conditions, there is enormous scientific opportunity. Thanks to the moon’s own mass, the lunar far side is shielded from radio interference coming from the Earth and sun. The lunar far side is so “quiet” that it’s a prime location for tapping into the whispering radio waves, and therefore the history, of the universe.
In particular, cosmologists seek to detect what is known as the “Dark Ages Signal.” Deep in the universe, radio waves linger from the Dark Ages, an early era of cosmological history that began about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It’s an epoch in time before stars and planets existed, and scientists have never been able to observe it due to the abundance of radio interference on Earth. Uncovering the Dark Ages Signal could reveal answers to some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, such as the nature of dark energy or the formation of the universe itself.
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