The Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) is currently in the design phase, but could soon become a reality if it passes final tests and receives full funding. (Image credit: NASA/Vladimir Vustyansky)
NASA scientists are currently developing plans to build a massive radio telescope in a nearly mile-wide crater on the “dark side” of the moon. If approved, the project could be completed as early as the 2030s and would cost more than $2 billion, project scientists told Live Science.
Astronomers are racing to build the first-of-its-kind antenna, known as the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), to help unravel some of the universe's greatest mysteries, and because of concerns about increasing levels of invisible radiation coming from private satellite “mega constellations” that could soon disrupt ground-based radio astronomy.
The proposed telescope would be assembled entirely by robots and would consist of a giant wire mesh suspended by cables inside a crater on the far side of the moon, similar to the collapsed Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico that searched for aliens or China's Five-hundred-Meter Spherical Aperture Telescope (FAST), both of which were built in natural depressions on Earth. This would shield the antenna from satellite signals and prevent interference from solar radiation and the Earth's atmosphere.
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