Have you ever wondered if we can discover the hidden side of the Moon? Some scientists from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA (the American space agency) are developing a new radio telescope to be placed on the Moon to probe the entire unexplored side of the satellite.
The telescope will be called Moon Star Surface Electromagnetic Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night) and it aims to help cosmologists unravel some of the great mysteries of the universe, such as the nature of dark energy and the formation of the universe.
The ‘hidden side’ of the Moon is actually the side we cannot see from Earth. During its full rotation around the Earth, the Moon also makes a full rotation around itself, meaning that it always faces the ‘same side’ of the Earth.
Not much is known about what happened there, but the composition is thought to be probably the same as on the visible side.
What we do know is that in addition to the more visible asteroid craters, there are few ‘seas’, i.e. plains created by volcanic activity caused by asteroid impacts.
Scientists are trying to study the far side of the Moon because the region is free of artificial radio signals from Earth, and if they can detect it, it will be a huge astronomical leap forward for many discoveries.
With LuSEE-Night, maybe this will be possible after a while. It must reject heat in a vacuum during the day and avoid freezing at night – while doing all this it feeds in constant darkness for 14 days and conducts unprecedented science.
“LuSEE-Night is not a standard radio telescope,” said Anže Slosar. “It will work like an FM radio picking up radio signals in a similar frequency range. The spectrometer is at the center of that. Like a radio receiver, it can separate radio frequencies and convert signals into spectra. This is where our experience gives us a starting point. No one has ever done anything like this before.” “While we didn’t make tools, we know how to make the most important component, a very sensitive spectrometer.”
Source: Tec Mundo
I’m Blaine Morgan, an experienced journalist and writer with over 8 years of experience in the tech industry. My expertise lies in writing about technology news and trends, covering everything from cutting-edge gadgets to emerging software developments. I’ve written for several leading publications including Gadget Onus where I am an author.
