🔴 The future of space-based astronomy is very promising. Check out 4 new space telescopes NASA wants to build! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-R8KlX2OFg-s.html
I disagree with a lot of your problems. Put the first telescope in Shackleton crater. That will block the Earth and the sun. It will have a near-constant solar power source. It is a constant temperature. Computing would be very efficient at that low temperature, allowing massive processing of images. I grant that building a support base there is a prerequisite, but it's where so many proposals for the base are anyway. Imagine a networked array of telescopes spread across hundreds of kilometers, not just visible light but infra-red and radio telescopes With that sort of size, we would be able to clearly image other planets.
@WalkOn Bye Good luck with that. The world will be taken over by ignorance, purely by the sheer numbers... Unfortunately ignorant people are not only on ground level, they have made their way up into all levels of society. The only thing that will keep them from burning your stuff on the moon is the lack of atmosphere.
+++ All telescopes will be displaced by our low cost [$5MM], compact telescope with a broad field magnification from 10X to continent resolution/discernability at 100 light year distance. Similar performance on the obverse side with table top sized microscopes where even the interior of the nucleus will be viewable. Path to atomic scale electronics manufacturing with real time defect removal for perfect outcomes each and every time. I think I'll call it the Tiny Wonder Scope
Modernly, if they maintain the telescope in local range, and powerful in size and feature. It will be successful. Future telescopes wouldn't need to be a mirror or large at all. Just have over 100s to 10,000s plus small camera sencors zoomed from almost...to exactly a partical beam wide
I recently thought a lot about telescopes on the moon and began to investigate. After watching this video I feel a little bit naive. Awesome Infos! Thanks. :)
@@LaunchPadAstronomy I saw you repeatedly made comments on my videos and I admit only just now I found your channel. I regret not having done this earlier. I will certainly do some binge watching soon. :)
I watched the video twice because there was so many interesting information . I never thought there would be so much consideration n obstacles to overcome to build a telescope on the moon . I never imagined a liquid mirror would be possible . The video was very exciting because it showed the possibilities of astronomy in the future is astronomical. Once again , thanks Christian for another awesome video.🖖
A little off topic but I've been admiring the design of the four new telescopes preview picture since the last video. All four a completely different shape coming together in such a satisfying package. Always been a fan of the celestial purple/blue color palette, too.
This is the first video I have seen from you (and I watch way to much RU-vid). Very nicely done sir. Well paced talking, so information can really sink in. All without some cheesy music over playing your voice. Excellent graphics. Fact's very well laid out, so well researched. Love how you stated James Webb scheduled for sometime "this decade". I usually watch 2 to 5 video's from someone before subbing , You got it in one.
I subscribe to a couple dozen science channels, and none of them are talking about this technology! Thank you for bringing me exciting new ideas to think about! In these days of Doom and Gloom, it's nice to know that humans are doing something to be proud of.
Excellent video. I'm slightly sad that there are so many issues with having a telescope on the moon as i've dreamed about this possibility for a very long time. Lol
in theory you could designate the far side of the moon as a radio quite zone. this would mean that a lunar positioning system similar to gps or any communication couldn't be used for the far side. communications would have to be routed through cables to the near side and LPS would have to use satellites in the L1, L4, L5 points of the moon. this is only for the ultra low frequency telescopes though. if we could find a different place to do that (like on an asteroid tidally locked with the sun) then the exclusion zone is not needed.
Point to point laser communication could be used. Similar to what the Starlink sats use, but on lunar relay towers. Positioning farside observatories near the terminator would minimize the distance and number of towers needed.
100% agree. no need to place telescopes in space when you can place them at either pole of the moon and look out at the cosmos. Easyer to keep people here to repair anything that breaks quickly, and polar placement of settlements allows for water ice harvesting from permanently shadowed craters. Also a good place to set up solar panels to make electricity.
Launch Pad Astronomy, the pleasure is mine. However, you have missed one crucial thing here. Sputtering. On the moon in the pure vacuum conditions there is a way to make reflective surface to sputter it with aluminium or other metals relatively easy. And it doesn’t require any massive amount of sputtered material or complex equipment.
A cheap lunar based astronomical system would be a few seismometers that detect micro meteorite impacts to measure the meteor shower densities such as Leonid. Three seismometers would allow calculating exact locations and sizes of lunar collisions and eliminate all false readings. Larger impacts would also allow calculating internal lunar structure by analyzing seismic readings
Something like this was covered at a space development conference. if you build a telescope on the moon you could not be close to a rocket launched base because of the dust raised.
@neil u Moonship, that's what I call SpaceX's proposed ship to get us to the moon. Moonship will probably have hypergolic rockets, like the Dragon capsule will use in case of an abort on launch, located close to the top of the rocket so that when it is on it's way down to land on the moon it will not be using it's main rockets at the bottom of the rocket to land. They will probably use those rockets to greatly slow the rocket as it comes in to land, to hover the rocket high above the surface, and then transition over to the hypergolic rockets located close to the nose of the rocket so that it will not kick up a lot of dust when it lands. Hope that made sense...
I agree for the most part... Any moon based telescope is going to take some engineering to make it work. The first missions to the moon to build a base will result in landing pads being constructed to make it so that no dust gets kicked up. The first decades of any moon base will be messy, but we will eventually engineer it to make it more possible to do moon telescopes... Any telescope is going to be miles away from any base, and we will probably build covered roads to get to and from the telescopes, but once we have a rough and ready base on the moon, we will construct landing pads to mitigate against lunar regolith pollution. Just build massive pads with curved up edges so that the rocket isn't stirring up regolith and the rockets output gets redirected up away from the moon's surface. We could also fashion some way to harden all the regolith around a base so that it's like rock instead of dust.
I have a question about these moon based radio telescope, they are able to help in seti mission? I saw or read somewhere in internet that ska will be able to detect the signals of an airport within 1000 light years, they has better or similar sensibility? I read also the papers but I haven't seen nothing of precise about, also for THEZA(therahertz exploration and zooming in for astrophysics) that is an interesting concept for esa voyage 2050.
Finaly, someone agrees, with a Telescope On The Moon, two massive ones, we would prefer, on the polar points of the Moon, two BIG eyes👀 watching everything out there, same to every moons in the local area of the Solar system. 11:30 The video mentions the liquid mirrors not moving, fixed, they simply needed to be carved egg-eliptic, with the deflect mirrors arm doing 85% the pivit rotation, same method on 17:00, the video also shows it almost exposed, that to needs a rugged dome frame or hatch bubble.
For most of my (long) life, have envisioned a 2 telescope set; both space based. One near earth (or an earth Lagrange point) and the 2nd at a Mars Lagrange point). Although technically very difficult, it would produce a single telescope with a truly spectacular aperture!
I hope we do the long wave radio telescope on the far side as well as the rotating liquid crystal(?) telescope in a crater near one of the moon's poles. Would love to both of those.
I remember watching a documentary about the manned missions to the moon and how the moon has this super razor sharp magnetic "moon dust" that seems like it could be a major problem for lunar observatories, it was a huge problem for human astronauts. This along with no shielding for impact events such as very fast moving tiny bits of debris which could rain down on your super expensive and sensative lunar observatory turning it into very expensive shards of sadness. To have any medium to long term lunar observatory you'd need something capable of repairing itself and find a way to manage this super nasty ubiquitous moon dust.
Yep, moondust is going to be a problem. I discuss it in the video but I didn't quite make the point that any observatory would have to be protected against moondust contaminating the telescope or mitigating against micrometeorite impacts.
They could transmit by towers so no cables necessary. Communication towers on Earth do this already. Far side pretty rocky so high peaks readily available. Advantage is continuous contact vs intermittent with a satellite relay. This keeps reminding me that astronomers forget their engineering as soon as they graduate.
Seems to me like moon telescopes don't make much sense until we have the infrastructure to build every thing, the telescope itself and the manufacturing equipment, on the moon. At that point, moon astronomy would have many clear advantages for some applications.
So this is why one of those radio telescopes should be one of the first things built on the moon. Should also look to build one in the outer solar system.
I truly love the idea of this and cannot wait untill it happens I'l also like to see a couple one behind our sun and two behind pluto and a space and refueling station there.
Charles McIver . Launch reliability not so much the problem, I think the biggest question/threat is, will it unfold as designed once in space? If it doesn’t perform as designed it will end up as a multi billion dollar bit of space junk.
Given the JWST sun shield and the oragami sun shield of another telescope it would seem to me that a radio telescope of significant size would not be a huge engineering challenge (compared to a JWST). If we could map Mercury from Arecebo with radar we should be able to do similar things with a space based radar. Including mapping the solar system flotsam. It would also seem to me that getting a 'low tech' solar sail going would also be something to look in to. I know a bunch of 'higher tech' things have been proposed but can we start small?
Run a fiber optic cable from the telescope on the back side of the moon to the front side of the moon where there is radio relay communication or lazer light relay or microwave relay communication sending messages back to the Earth.
11/11 as always! I do have a quick fan question =). What's your favorite Grateful Dead Song? I noticed the Dead Scrapbook in the background forever ago =D.
I think that any moon base we build will be messy as hell from the outset, but we will eventually build landing pads for rockets to land such that lunar regolith will not be kicked up to any great degree. All you have to do is set the edge of the landing pads to redirect the thrust upwards so that it isn't interacting directly with the lunar regolith. Also, when it comes to something like SpaceX's Starship, the moon variant of Starship, let's call it Moonship, will not use it's main thrusters to land (more than likely). It will have rockets close to the tip of the rocket... As the Moonship comes in to land it will use it's main rockets to greatly slow its descent. At a certain height, the rockets close to the top of the ship will kick on and the base rockets will turn off so as to not kick up lots of regolith. Moonship will be a huge ship, to be sure, but the moon's gravity is much much less than earth's is so smaller rockets at the top of the Moonship should be able to handle landing the ship safely. My two cents...
With electrostatically levitated dust on the moon, this could be a problem with a lunar telescope. Since such dust rises and falls at lunar dusk and dawn, so perhaps a lunar telescope could have a cover that would close at those times.
I am so happy that pace exploration has restarted that very soon both near and far Human space inhabitation will begin and that Humankind will land on the moon again once more but this time for real to use so many different applications of it I like the idea of Moon industries and Moon stella and matter and space phenomena observation the best I also think that we should build a near space object observatory up their in order to protect the Earth and the moon base I just cannot wait Space 1999 is just a little late but I am so glad that it eventually did make it to the show.
As size increases, I suspect that there's a limit based on the lines of gravity converging quicker than on the larger Earth. Your parabola might not be what you expected.
True, though even for the Moon it'd have to be pretty ridiculous size. I still think gravity wells and Moon dust aren't worth it and anything that isn't radio should be in space :)
So what places in the outer solar system would radio astronomy be able to be done, since I noticed you only said “ the only place in the inner solar system that is in permanent shadow of the radio signals”
As it turns out, silver is more common in lunar rock than it is in the Earth's crust. Also, the moon is *particularly* rich in aluminum. So if you set up lunar foundries... You have ALL the aluminum for structure and silver for circuitry you could ever need! WAY THE HECK CHEAPER THAN SHIPPING IT FROM EARTH!
This is Bullship just like you do on Mars when you can communicate with the Mars rover and make it turn left and right you can do the same thing on the moon with a telescope by putting a device that a make it change from a regular lens to a filtered lands
There's always a workaround, just need to be clear with what you really want out of the tool, then design it. There are so many ways we can observe the universe and I get a little giddy when I think about all of the stuff we just _can't see_ but it's always there.
The whole "difficulty of going and doing stuff" on the Moon depends on the success of Starship. Plus the future Moon pirates, like in that (quite weak imho) Ad Astra movie.
@@LaunchPadAstronomy lol. I guess even the stupid SciFy channel movie where Mercury comes out of it's orbit and it's gravity starts making cars float (not only cars and other lose objects... no people, nor the mantle), was more scientifically accurate than Armageddon
Lunar-based astronomy could be controlled from the surface of Earth without satellites around the Moon although satellites around the Moon is a good idea satellites around the Moon and radio astronomy might conflict a little bit one way is to have along with lunar industrialization which would help produce the materials necessary to manufacture these telescope facilities to run fiber optic communications over the surface of the Moon to the near side and not all the way around necessarily but at least close enough that you could get line of sight to Earth with a radio telescope and from the radio astronomy on the far side through the fiber optic cabling to an uplink and that uplink could communicate directly with established on orbit satellite systems around the earth like starlink.
Not making concrete plans was the mistake the first time around. A basic do-over of Apollo is pointless. The technology to put infrastructure on the moon has to be the goal.
Excellent. We need a lunar international station & telescope... FOR YESTERDAY!!! Also builder robots so they can be sent to space, moon and mars to build.
I think it's really cool that you interact with your viewers, but I know there will come a time where you won't be able to be as responsive, because I think your channel is going to get huge.
What about the planet Mercury for Ultra-Low Frequency wavelengths? Slower rotation than the Moon combined with complete absence of Earth's radio signals and protection from solar radio waves suggest great potential.
I while the rotation is slower, Mercury isn’t tidally locked you the Sun the way the Moon is to Earth, so any telescope would have to withstand ~800 F temps for several weeks at a time. Then there’s the fact that the radio loud Earth and, at that close distance, Loud Sun would be in it’s sky much of the time. So I’m not sure Mercury is the place to be for that kind of astronomy. Interesting idea though!
Regarding dark side installations communicating with Earth: I'm PRETTY SURE SpaceX's Starlink deployment over Earth is just a test run to deploy it around other celestial bodies :3 it's the first step toward Intrasolar Internet!
The lunar lander when it landed didn't have a problem with dust particles because photos never showed any moon dust on any of the lunar modules landing legs or extensions
me watching: him: you cant do that 3 mins later him: actually you can, but you cant 3 mins later him: but there's a solution, but you still cant 3 mins later him: actually you can do that, but there's a problem me: ._.
From around 1990, when I first read about VLT and interferometry, I have had a vision of eight points on the Lunar surface, like in the corners of an imaginary cube, with three telescopes in each point. All four telescopes covering one of the six resulting squares, should be connected via interferometry. Sadly I never got around the problem of connecting those telescopes with high enough accuracy. Though, after seeing the results from the Event Horizon Telescope, there might be (first) light ahead. Or maybe an simpler, more direct solution. Maybe via satellite. :-)
EHT gets much higher resolution just on account of Earth being larger than the Moon. But if recovers on Earth and the Moon are linked together, that would be way beyond anything we could achieve from Earth orbit!
Ok, so the weight and vapour pressure of elemental mercury explains why you can't use it for a space-based liquid mirror. But why would it have to be mercury? There are other metals or alloys which would have similar optical properties: Galinstan alloy (gallium/indium/tin) has an enormous liquid range, from about -20 up to over 1000 degrees C, is less than half the density of mercury, and has no vapour pressure so wouldn't evaporate in a vacuum. Or why not use sodium-potassium alloy? That also has hardly any vapour pressure, a liquid range from -11 to about 800 degrees C, and is much lighter too, with a density lower than water. It is a bit pyrophoric, but that's not much of a problem in space where there is no oxygen.
Once you put something in space, why make it twice as hard getting it down to another surface? This requires extra fuel, assembly, and runs additional risks of accidents. Plus all the regolith that may cover lenses and get inside the equipment requiring extra maintenance.
If there is such a drastic temperature shift on the moon , the insulation required must be equivalent to the Kepler Telescope that is continually being bombarded by radiation from the sun. What is the difference? Is it because of the changing temperatures?
Seeing that astronaut flop around in the lunar regolith is both horrifying and hilarious without his reaction. Is he laughing at himself or is he scared into silence with quick grunts of effort? I don't know!
Because the suit is filled with pressurized air, it makes it really hard for astronauts to bend their arms and legs... This makes their movement strained and awkward. I'm sure some cussing and grunting was involved.
10:40 partial pressure of mercury on Earth is FAPP zero, exactly like in the lunar vacuum, so I'd say that mercury should not evaporate any faster in the lunar vacuum than it does so on Earth. If it's protected against excessive heating by direct and indirect light that is. A protection that is necessary anyway to prevent thermal expansion/contraction. -- Right?
