Moon’s Far Side: New Observatories Proposed
From Leonard David’s Inside Outer Space: Earth’s Moon is being eyed as an on-location locale for operating unique and novel observatories. The just-concluded NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium was the setting for reviewing several NIAC-backed studies.
One concept outlined at NIAC is the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon, explained by Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
This proposal centered on deploying a wire mesh using wall-climbing robots in a 3 to 5 kilometer diameter crater, with a suitable depth-to-diameter ratio, to form a parabolic reflector with a one kilometer diameter.
A selected crater must have several attributes: No boulders or outcrops; a complete crater rim; and a level surface outside the crater.