MIT researchers received NASA funding to develop a radio telescope array for the far side of the moon. Consisting of hundreds of telescope modules working in tandem, the Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology (LARC) will be used to look back into the "cosmic Dark Ages" shortly after the Big Bang when stars and galaxies first formed. Construction on the $1 billion array won't begin until after 2025. Seen here is physicist Jacqueline Hewitt with a prototype radio telescope array. From MIT News:
Observations of the cosmic Dark Ages are impossible to make from Earth, (lead researcher Jacqueline) Hewitt explains, because of two major sources of interference that obscure these faint low-frequency radio emissions. One is the Earth's ionosphere, a high-altitude layer of electrically charged gas. The other is all of Earth's radio and television transmissions, which produce background interference everywhere on the Earth's surface.The only place that is totally shielded from both kinds of interference is the far side of the moon, which always faces away from the Earth and therefore is never exposed to terrestrial radio transmissions.
