keeping an eye on the far side of the moon
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When Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen travels beyond the Moon Artemis 2Part of their work will include observing the far side of the moon, which is not visible from Earth. Also, scientists on Earth will be watching carefully, as they plan to eventually send telescopes and robots to peer into deep space.
Our Moon is literally two-faced. Since it is attached to the Earth due to gravity, one side of it always faces towards our planet and the other side outwards towards deep space. While the far side is sometimes called the dark side, this is a misconception. It receives as much sunlight as the part facing the Earth.
The far side of the Moon has a rougher, crater-saturated surface than the near side, with large flat plains called “maria”. latin word for sea. It is a very quiet place, protected from all the artificial radio noise coming from Earth, which is why astronomers are so interested in it as a location for their radio telescopes.
The only way to see the far side of the moon is by spacecraft, so Hansen will have a rare opportunity to see scenes that few humans have seen with the naked eye since the Apollo era. In fact, he’ll see more than those early pioneers, as the Artemis flight path will take him 7,500 kilometers beyond the Moon, bringing the entire world into view.
The Apollo astronauts orbited very close to the surface, so they only saw the equatorial regions.
Additionally, Hansen will see the Moon as well as the entire Earth at the same time, a perspective that human eyes have never seen before.
During their flight to the Moon, the Artemis crew will take detailed observations of the Moon’s surface by peering out the windows because the human eye can detect subtle details such as differences in colors or shades of gray that the camera may miss. Those differences reflect different ground conditions, such as the amount of dust or surface roughness that could affect a landing spacecraft.
One of the far-flung proposed missions is the Japanese Tsukuyomior the Lunar Meter Wave Telescope, which will install the first array of radio dishes on the far side of the Moon in an effort to observe the early days of the universe, called dark ages.
About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, the time before stars and galaxies were born, there was a time when the universe was mostly composed of neutral hydrogen gas that did not give off light, hence called the Dark Ages. However, the gas emitted very faint radio signals that should be detected by highly sensitive instruments on the Moon.
Signals of the Dark Ages may also shed light on how dark matter, which dominates matter in the universe today, influenced the evolution of the early universe, perhaps directing the development of stars, galaxies and planets.
The first TSUKUYOMI prototype is proposed to land near the Moon’s south pole in 2027 to 2028, with more antennae aimed on the far side in the 2030s. These will be linked to another robotic radio observatory called lucy night from the University of Colorado at Boulder, which aims to launch this year, and a NASA robot called Farside Seismic Suite It will record moon earthquakes, scheduled to launch in 2027.
Both have other plans for lunar observatories NASA And ESA Which are in the initial stage of development.
While human missions to the Moon will focus on building a colony and exploring water ice at the south pole, their landing sites will always have Earth on the horizon for communications purposes.
On the other side of the Moon, completely hidden from view, a host of robots may be quietly peering to the edge of the universe and the beginning of time to find out how it all began.
