Astronomers Plan Far Side of the Moon Satellite to Hear Billion-Year-Old Radio Waves (cosmosmagazine.com) 12
An anonymous reader shared this report from Cosmos magazine about a plan to "pick up those faint signals from billions of years ago."
Astronomers are planning to launch a tiny spacecraft to the far side of the Moon to listen out for "ancient whispers" in a quest to uncover the secrets of the early universe. The mission will focus on understanding the 'Cosmic Dawn', a period in the early stages of the universe after the Big Bang but before the first stars and galaxies appeared.
One of the difficulties in studying this period of the universe is that silence is essential. With all the electronics and interference in our atmosphere, Earth becomes too loud, making it unsuitable for this kind of research... The proposed mission will utilise the Moon as a giant shield, blocking out the noise from Earth, in order to observe these signals...
The mission, known as CosmoCube, is a joint study between the UK's University of Portsmouth, University of Cambridge and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Space... CosmoCube's radio will operate at low frequencies (10-100MHz), which should hopefully be able to detect extremely faint signals. The team hope to reach lunar orbit before the end of the decade, with a roughly 5-year roadmap planned.
The article includes this quote from Professor David Bacon, from the University of Portsmouth and CosmoCube researcher. "It's incredible how far these radio waves have travelled, now arriving with news of the universe's history.
"The next step is to go to the quieter side of the Moon to hear that news."
One of the difficulties in studying this period of the universe is that silence is essential. With all the electronics and interference in our atmosphere, Earth becomes too loud, making it unsuitable for this kind of research... The proposed mission will utilise the Moon as a giant shield, blocking out the noise from Earth, in order to observe these signals...
The mission, known as CosmoCube, is a joint study between the UK's University of Portsmouth, University of Cambridge and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Space... CosmoCube's radio will operate at low frequencies (10-100MHz), which should hopefully be able to detect extremely faint signals. The team hope to reach lunar orbit before the end of the decade, with a roughly 5-year roadmap planned.
The article includes this quote from Professor David Bacon, from the University of Portsmouth and CosmoCube researcher. "It's incredible how far these radio waves have travelled, now arriving with news of the universe's history.
"The next step is to go to the quieter side of the Moon to hear that news."
We've seen that before, filmed by Kubrick (Score:3)
"Far Side of the Moon Satellite" (Score:3)
Re:"Far Side of the Moon Satellite" (Score:4, Informative)
It will probably only listen when on the far side and wait out the rest.
Aliens should play some Pink Floyd to mess with us.
Re:"Far Side of the Moon Satellite" (Score:4, Informative)
Addendum: it will play and send back recorded radio waves to Earth when on the near side of the moon, so it's a cycle of scoop-n-spew.
Re:"Far Side of the Moon Satellite" (Score:5, Informative)
How will the satellite keep station on the far side of the moon?
It will probably only listen when on the far side and wait out the rest.
Right. It's in a 100-km oribit around the moon; listens to deep space when it's on the far side, communicates with space when it's on the near side. Diagram and explanations here : https://www.cosmocube.net/our-... [cosmocube.net]
Aliens should play some Pink Floyd to mess with us.
Just be careful not to set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Re: (Score:3)
Circling in a so called "halo orbit" perpendicular to the line from earth through the moon.
Around Erath/Moon L2 Langrange point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It is called "Halo" as from the point of view from Earth, it is behind the Moon, and circling just outside of its ring/ball shape.
Why a satellite (Score:2)
Why not build an antenna in the middle of the far side of the moon?
Re:Why a satellite (Score:5, Informative)
Because you would have to land on the far side which is not a simple feat in itself. Then you would have to have a satellite to relay the data from the far side because - well - it's on the far side.
This is a pretty low budget mission because getting into moon orbit is not that difficult.
how (Score:2)
How does a "satellite" stay only on the far side of the moon? A: it doesn't.
Re:how (Score:4, Funny)
This is like twitting those silly astronomers for building telescopes on Earth to look at the stars when the Sun is up half the time, a fact they must have overlooked. Also there are sometimes clouds. Didn't they know that? That makes the whole enterprise a waste of time! (/s)
In this case the "Sun" is radio-noisy Earth, and "night" is when the Moon is blocking it for the satellite. Being able to collect data half the time is shooting under par for astronomy -- no Earth bound system can do that well.
Re: (Score:1)
Hint: "We're there now. Oops, not, Okay We're there now. Oops, not, Okay We're there now...."
How The Mission Actually Works (Score:3)
With a title like Cosmos one would expect that the magazine could trust its readership not to recoil in confusion if they provided a more specific description of what the mission does. A good discussion can be found here [oup.com]:
They are observing the highly red-shifted 21 cm (1420.4 MHz) neutral hydrogen emission line with a radiospectrometer that has extremely fine frequency resolution allowing them to measure its intensity at various closely spaced red shifts in the range of Z=13 to 150. This allows them to collect data on the formation of neutral hydrogen clouds in the "cosmic dark ages" from about 380,000 years after the Big Bang and 400 million years when stars first formed. Currently we can detect the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) emission all of which is from the 380,000 year horizon, and then the light from early stars 400 million years later, but nothing in between.
The Cosmos article needlessly obfuscates this by mushing it into: "CosmoCube’s radio will operate at low frequencies (10–100MHz), which should hopefully be able to detect extremely faint signals" without explaining what they are actually observing and why.
Also the /. article has a a terrible headline. This observing signals that are 13.3 billion years old, or older, not "billion year old. That is like reporting on a Roman excavation and titling it a "century old site".