- NASA and the Department of Energy are teaming up on a new instrument to search the moon’s radio environment.
- The government’s goal is to gain information about the universe’s dark ages.
- The new technology needs to survive the unforgiving environment of the lunar surface at night on the far side of the moon.
Everyone needs a Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night device, especially if you’re trying to analyze the far side of the moon.
In a joint experiment between NASA and the Department of Energy, the government agencies are working together to develop a new science instrument meant to handle the unforgiving environment of the lunar surface at night on the far side of the moon. It all comes with one goal: “attempt first-of-its-kind measurements of the dark ages of the universe,” NASA says in a news release.
The new instrument with the funky name shortened to LuSEE-Night will be created in collaboration with the DoE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, the DoE Office of Science, UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, and NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Experiment leaders believe LuSEE-Night is a “pathfinder” to understand the moon’s radio environment and then potentially take a first look at a previously unobserved era in our cosmic history. Some scientists believe the dark ages of the universe occurred directly after the universe’s origin and before stars and galaxies. With radio waves the only signal to measure from the dark ages, LuSee may provide a chance to learn how the first non-luminous matter evolved into stars and galaxies.
“Lu-SEE-Night is a fascinating experiment that will get us closer to observing something we‘ve never been able to before—the dark ages signal,” Asmeret Asefew Berhe, the DoE’s director of the Office of Science, says in a news release. “With this collaboration, DoE and NASA are setting conditions for successful exploration of the dark ages cosmology in the decades to come.”
Researching these radio wave signals isn’t possible from Earth’s surface due to our planet’s opaque ionosphere and the constant noise pollution of the inner solar system. The far side of the moon doesn’t have the same ionosphere issues and comes shielded from Earth’s radio emissions and the sun, offering the chance for sensitive radio astronomy signals unlike anywhere else in the near-Earth space environment.
The LuSEE-Night device will eventually make it to the far side of the moon on a payload services flight and take measurements. That’s the plan, at least, but first, engineers must create a robotic device that can handle temperature swings from 250 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to -280 degrees Fahrenheit at night while not failing.
Joel Kearns, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate deputy associate administrator for exploration, says in a news release:
“LuSee-Night will operate during the cold temperatures of the 14-day lunar night, when no sunlight is available to generate power or heat. In addition to the significant potential science return, demonstration of the LuSEE-Night lunar night survival technology is crucial to performing long-term, high-priority science investigations from the lunar surface.”
“Every time we have opened a new frequency window in cosmology,” says Anze Slosar, the LuSEE-Night science collaboration spokesperson, “we have unlocked new discoveries about the history of the universe and our place within it.”
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
