Racing to build a radio telescope on the moon

A new paper proposes building a radio telescope on the moon's far side to detect signals like the 1977 "Wow!" signal. The mission, called LFT3, would deploy a radio antenna by the end of the decade and cost $150 million using NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The telescope would operate across HF, VHF, and UHF bands and scan the deep cosmos for 20 weeks, monitoring for technosignatures, auroras, and fast radio bursts. The far side is considered safe from Earth's radio interference, but by 2030, a growing fleet of orbiters and landers will introduce RFI, making the mission urgent. The telescope would need to withstand extreme temperature fluctuations, from 120°C to -130°C, and use an orbiting satellite to relay data back to Earth, which currently has a data transfer limit of 100 GB per month. The mission aims to process data at the telescope itself to reduce the data bottleneck, but this requires radiation-hardened equipment. The paper notes that the mission hasn't received funding yet, but the $150 million price tag makes it relatively appealing given the time limit for the mission's usefulness. The article highlights the potential of the mission to detect extraterrestrial signals and improve our understanding of the universe.

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