Of course, it goes without saying that Chang’e 4, the historical mission of China 2019 landed on the dark side of the moon, carrying a simple radio astronomy antenna; But this mission was not optimized for cosmic observations and was therefore affected by radio interference from the lander itself.
The Lucinete rover, which is under construction with funding from NASA and the US Department of Defense, will be sent to the far side of the moon by a private contractor as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Transport Services program. The four three-meter antennas of this spacecraft, which are installed in a cross shape, will try to measure the “cosmic dawn”; A period of the world’s history that is thought to be detectable in the radio spectrum, and by observing it, the appearance of the first stars in the universe will be revealed.
However, it will be challenging for Lucinite to measure the cosmic dawn even from the quiet and quiet location on the far side of the Moon. The radio effect of the early universe is a hundred thousand times weaker than the noise produced by the universe in the same frequency range; Consequently, it will be very important to limit this noise from the spacecraft itself.
Stuart Beale“The only way to do this is to shut down the rover completely and put in enough batteries to keep the radio receiver going during the two-week lunar nights,” says University of California, San Francisco, astrophysicist who is the mission’s principal investigator at NASA. Receiving electronics, including clocks that enable continuous operation of computers, must be designed to block any radio emissions to a limited portion of the spectrum. We require that all oscillators operate at known frequencies with certified frequency stability. It is easier for experimenters to remove a known and predictable source of noise during data processing.
According to Bill, these types of designs are relatively simple precautions that all lunar missions, including commercial missions, can take. If the spacecraft is designed to be free of any radio frequency interference, it can greatly reduce the chance of damaging future experiments.
