The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers

Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by drzaiusapelord on Thursday April 16, 2015 @10:54AM (#9388307)

The "internet of things" is just going to make this worse and there's really no fighting it. My question is considering how many billions are pissed away tossing men and women into the ISS for reasons not apparent to me, why don't we have a radio telescope on the far side of the moon yet? I keep hearing about all these manned missions, COTS money handed to SpaceX, etc but the one thing that would be a gamechanger for radio astronony is not even on anyone's radar.

I'd love to see the next POTUS make this a priority. Yeah, Orion and the SLS are impressive, but they're mostly fighting yesterday's battles - pretty much a souped up Apollo for similar big feel-good missions where men and women go into LEO/moon/asteroids/maybe-mars for a very short time and fly right back. Why can't we also fund a farside telescope that could work for decades 24/7 providing space science advantages we simply cannot get any other way?

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by g-clef on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:02AM (#9388378)

The moon is a pretty bad place for any long-term base...lunar dust is really hard on equipment. The l4/l5 points, though, are very interesting and there's a bunch of projects putting probes at the various l4/l5 points in the solar system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_p...

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by titzer on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:10AM (#9388451)

There's no atmosphere, so its unlikely Lunar dust would contaminate any equipment. It settles immediately after landing and doesn't blow around. Minimal shielded for touchdown would be all that's necessary.

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by drzaiusapelord on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:14AM (#9388495)

Perhaps I wasn't clear. This would be an unmanned telescope. We're talking a one time landing of a piece of equipment. Dust will be a non-issue after the initial landing.

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by g-clef on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:52AM (#9388797)

Not necessarily. One of the interesting results from LADEE was that the measured lunar dust increased a few hours before the probe landed (attributed possibly to the geminid meteor shower). There's lots of stuff that can kick dust off the lunar surface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Atmosphere_and_Dust_Envir...

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by TorKlingberg on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:39AM (#9388695)

"Internet of things" devices mostly use cellular, WiFi or Bluetooth, and those frequencies are already in heavy use so I doubt it will make much difference for astronomers.

About the far side of the moon, there is little reason to put a telescope there. It is much easier to put one in orbit around the earch, sun or an earth-sun Lagrange point.

As for manned space exploration versus robotic, I think that is a debate for an other day.

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by drzaiusapelord on Thursday April 16, 2015 @11:50AM (#9388783)

Those other locations still be susceptible to stray radio transmissions, especially an Earth orbit which would also have issues with Earth's ionosphere. All that moon rock is going to be a great radio insulator.

I also imagine there are cost savings by having it sit on the surface of a moon than being its own satellite. No need for worry about orbit corrections or strict weight limitations. The Tsiolkovskiy crater is pretty flat and would make a good candidate for a telescope which would have long antenna arrays laying on the surface.

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Re:The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers by snowwrestler on Thursday April 16, 2015 @12:07PM (#9388905)

I doubt there are cost savings in siting it on the lunar surface. Yes you save on station-keeping, but it's very costly and dangerous to descend into a gravity well like that. Weight is definitely still important to make sure it doesn't hit too hard.

L2 point would give you almost all the benefits with a lot less risk and cost.

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