As part of the Artemis program, NASA plans to create all the necessary infrastructure to create “a sustained program of lunar exploration and development.” These include Moongate, an orbital habitat that would allow regular trips to the surface, and Artemis Base Camp, which would allow astronauts to stay there for up to two months. Various space agencies also plan to build instruments that will take advantage of the “quiet nature” of the lunar environment, including high-resolution telescopes.

As part of this year’s NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) program, a team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has proposed a design for a lunar long baseline optical interferometer (LBI) for imaging in the visible and ultraviolet ranges. This proposed multi-telescope array, known as the Artemis-assisted Star Imager (AeSI), has been selected for the first phase of development. With some luck, the AeSI array could operate on the far side of the Moon, capturing detailed images of stars’ surfaces and their surroundings.

The proposal was made by Kenneth Carpenter and his colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Carpenter is a Hubble Operations Project Scientist at GSFC and a Ground System Scientist at the Rome Nancy Grace Space Telescope (RST).

As he noted in his proposals, NASA’s return to the Moon opens up many important opportunities for scientific research that impacts it. The most important of these is the potential for observatories that take advantage of the “radio silence” environment and prolonged darkness on the far side of the Moon.

The Moon’s day and night cycle lasts 14 days due to the tidally locked nature of its orbit, where one side of the Moon always faces Earth. This means that a “lunar day” consists of two weeks of continuous sunlight, while a lunar night consists of two weeks of continuous darkness.

At the same time, the Moon’s airless environment means that observations made with optical telescopes will not be subject to atmospheric interference. This makes the far side of the Moon a pristine environment for high-resolution interferometric imaging, a method in which multiple telescopes collect light to look for interference patterns.

Astronomers extract data from these models to create a detailed picture of celestial objects that are difficult to distinguish with traditional telescopes. The same technique allowed the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of radio telescopes, to obtain an image of a black hole for the first time.

According to the team, the lunar interferometry array has enormous scientific potential and could be built in phases to limit construction costs: “It could dissect the surfaces of stars, study the internal accretion disks surrounding newborn stars and black holes, and launch technical journeys to the surface and surface on the nearest exoplanets.” Describe the characteristics of weather conditions”.

“A full-blown facility will be large and expensive, but it doesn’t have to start out that way. Technologies can be developed and tested in short baselines with two or three small telescopes. Once the technology has improved, baselines can be expanded, larger telescopes added, and the number of telescopes increased. Each of these upgrades will increase the size of the system.” “It can be done with minimal disruption to the rest.”

Despite these advantages, the team notes that previous work on interferometers in space has focused on free-flying array designs. This was largely due to NASA’s 2003-2005 vision studies that explored the balance between the concept of free flight in space and kilometer-scale interferometers built on the lunar surface.

The study concluded that it would be better to follow flights flying from space, given the lack of pre-existing human infrastructure that could provide power and regular maintenance on the lunar surface.

However, Carpenter and his team say that this situation has now changed with the Artemis program. With the construction of surface habitats, transportation, drilling, and energy facilities scheduled to be completed in the coming years, now is the time to explore the possibility of building interferometers on the lunar surface.

“Our Lunar Surface Interferometer study will be a major step forward in building larger arrays across a wide range of wavelengths and scientific subjects, both on the Moon and in free flight in space,” they write.

“Given the current and expected state of our space technology and our plans for human exploration, it will determine whether it is better to continue designing for the lunar surface or deep space.”

In addition, they predict that lunar interferometry will lead to advances in astrophysics, such as the study of the magnetic activity of stars, the cores of active galaxies, and the dynamics of cosmological events at many scales.

The design and construction of such a facility will address important engineering challenges, such as the best way to combine variable length optical lines, the best configurations for telescopes, and the optimal mirror size to achieve both technical and scientific goals. They also hope to create a plan for maintaining and expanding the facility over time using a combination of human and robotic support.

In addition, expected benefits include technical advances that will enable ultraviolet optical interferometry and space missions capable of imaging black holes (similar to EHT), searching for biological signatures, and directly imaging rocky exoplanets around other stars.

Carpenter and his colleagues also expect that the creation of a large facility on the moon, along with the Artemis program’s goals for human exploration, will generate tremendous public interest and involvement:

“Ultimately, this effort will enable people to dream again and remind us that we can do great things even in difficult times. Our research will help focus on the vastness of the universe and what people can do if they work hard together. Our project will inspire the next generation of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics who will be inspired by this bold vision.” “It will ensure the participation of (STEAM) employees.” Source