NASA’s Artemis Program Plans to Put High-Resolution Camera Array on the Dark Side of the Moon

In the coming years, NASA plans to collaborate with commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. This long-term goal also offers opportunities to take practical steps towards high-impact scientific capabilities.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ NASA)

Harnessing the Potential of Lunar Surface

With the Artemis mission, not only will NASA land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, but innovative technologies will also be used to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. Then, the data they gather will be used to take the next giant leap of sending the first astronauts to Mars.

As part of this program, NASA aims to establish all the needed infrastructure to create a sustained lunar exploration and development program. This includes the Lunar Gateway, an extraterrestrial space station enabling regular trips to and from the lunar surface. It will also involve the Artemis Base Camp, allowing the astronauts to stay on the Moon for up to two months. Several agencies also plan to create facilities that will take advantage of the "quiet nature" of the lunar environment.

Because of the tidally locked nature of its orbit, only one side of the Moon is always facing toward Earth, making the day/night cycle last for 14 days. This means a "lunar day" comprises two weeks of continuous sunlight, while a "lunar night" consists of two weeks of continuous darkness.

The airless environment on the Moon also means that any observations by optical telescopes will not be subject to atmospheric interference. As a result, the far side of the Moon becomes a pristine environment for conducting high-resolution interferometric imaging. This technique uses multiple telescopes to collect light to search for interference patterns.

Studying the Cosmos in Unprecedented Detail

An obvious candidate to achieve this goal is the establishment of imaging techniques that use ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. This can explore the surfaces of the stars, surrey inner accretion disks around black holes, and probe surface features and weather patterns on nearby exoplanets.

As part of the NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) Program, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center experts have proposed the design for a Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer (LBI). Also called Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI), the array of multiple telescopes offered was chosen for Phase I development. If it becomes successful, the AeSI array could be operating on the dark side of the Moon and take detailed images of stellar surfaces and their environments. The proposal was made by Kenneth Carpenter and his colleagues at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

According to a 1966 study, a free-flying telescope is more viable since a lunar-based telescope would require building infrastructure on the Moon. It is more costly to set up a lunar base than it would be to pursue individual satellite missions. Because of this, space agencies designed and launched high-resolution telescopes such as the Hubble or James Webb Space Telescope. However, since modern technology has increased the possibility of accessing the Moon more efficiently, the concept of a lunar telescope has once again gained the attention of astronomers.