[X] My Assistant

[marsbug]

Hello everybody, I've developed a bit of a fascination with the moon recently, and so I was delighted to read this about a private group in hawai making progress toward putting an unmanned observatory on the moon. I couldn't find any mention of it in either the lunar exploration or private missions section, so I thought I'd start a thread to see what peoples thoughts are on the idea. Is it a good one, and if so why has it not been done before? What exactly will it be used for?

[djellison]

"We see this as a critical phase of work for ILO, as it will solidify the mission’s goals and priorities,"

Looks like they don't know what they want it for themselves. I've seen this debated elsewhere on the subject of NEO detetction, and simply can not seen the point of putting a telescope on the moon, when you've already put it into space. Radio Astronomy from the far side of the moon makes some sense - that I can appreciate. But anything else? Why put it on the Moon? Would a facility like Hubble, sat on the moon, be a better scope than Hubble in LEO or a Hubble like facility at L1/L2.

Yes - in 'free space' you have to manage your pointing, but you're also in a more thermally stable environment (instead of a two weeks on-two weeks off cycle), and have as much electricity as you could want available 24/7 via solar arrays (instead of requiring something else, rtg's etc). Moonquakes don't happen in free space.

A telescope on the moon will take better pictures than one on the Earth - but it won't take better pictures than one in free space, and for the mass involved in putting it on the lunar surface, surely you could design a very stable bus platform using gyros etc and maybe even a larger scope rather than a decent stage and mount for pointing. I can see why they got a UV scope out with Apollo - it was the quickest and easiest way to get that data without building full spacecraft. However, it was a short project that was wrapped up and brought home within hours - not an unmanned facility to be launched and then landed.

Perhaps I'm missing a major piece of the picture - but scopes on the moon - it just doesn't make sense to me.

Doug