Different projects, one mission: to take a telescope to the Moon to investigate the still unknown history of the Universe.
Before the first star was lit, there was no light in the Universe. Scientists call the long period of total darkness that followed the Big Bang “the dark side of the Universe,” and they are confident that upcoming missions to the Moon will finally give us our first glimpse into the darkest and most unknown era of our Universe.
The Dark Side of the Universe
Approximately 13.8 billion years ago, in a fraction of a second, our universe originated: the Cosmos began to grow and cool, until the first subatomic particles, quarks and gluons, which would later form the matter as we know it, were formed.
The Universe remained completely dark for another hundreds of millions of years, before light made its appearance, with the formation of the first stars and galaxies. These are the years that scientists call the “dark years,” because very little can be studied about what happened in the universe before the advent of light.
“The early universe had no galaxies, just glowing material,” says Nobel laureate John Mather, who works at NASA, “and something must have happened as the galaxies were forming.
Solving the mystery of the Universe’s dark years is, in Mather’s words, “one of the great goals of astronomy today,” and it appears that scientists have found a possible solution to investigate its long, still unknown history.
Although no visible light was emitted before star formation, the primordial matter that pervaded the Universe presumably emitted radio signals: we have never intercepted them from Earth because of the significant pollution given by terrestrial radio communications, but it would be possible to detect them by taking a telescope to the Moon.
A telescope on the Moon
The dark side of the Moon, the one that is not observable from Earth, is the place that radio astronomers believe would allow us to detect any primordial radio waves: there, on the face always facing away from Earth, there could be the natural sound barrier that we need to listen to the history of the Universe.
The idea of placing a telescope on the Moon is not new: already in 1986 there was talk of building a telescope on the lunar surface, and even before the Apollo missions it was common thought that one of the most important reasons to go to the Moon was precisely the possibility of installing a telescope there.
The Challenger disaster changed everything, and bringing a telescope to the Moon was one of the many intentions that fell, at least momentarily, into oblivion.
However, since the 1980s, Jack O. Burns, who now directs the NASA-funded Network for Space Exploration and Science, has been the most vocal proponent of placing a telescope on the Moon. The same Burns who has just completed preliminary studies for the FARSIDE project: an entire radio telescope will arrive on the Moon packed inside a robotic lunar lander (it’s not known which one since Burns has been working with Blue Origin from the beginning, while NASA has chosen SpaceX).
What will happen? Four small rovers will slowly unfurl about 50 kilometers of cables and 128 antennas in a spiral shape that is believed to cover nearly 10 square kilometers.
Concurrently, NASA has just funded the study for another lunar telescope, and China has already released a small telescope on the dark side of the Moon with the Chang’e 4 lander.
Whether it’s NASA, Bezos or China, Burns concludes, “I’m sure we’ll do it, we’re ready to go.”