Robots to install telescopes to scan the cosmos from the moon

BOULDER, Colorado (Reuters) – While the United States is using humans to put the moon back on its feet for the first time in 50 years, a NASA-funded Colorado lab aims to send robots there to deploy telescopes that will see far into our galaxy, remotely controlled by astronauts in orbit.

Radio telescopes, which must be located at the back of the moon, are part of the plethora of ongoing projects by the US Space Agency, private companies and other countries that will transform the lunar landscape of the next decade.

"We're not interested in your grandfather's Apollo program," said Jack Burns, director of the network for exploration and space science at the University of Colorado, who works on the telescope project.

"It's really a very different type of program and it's very important that machines and human beings work together," Burns said in an interview in his lab on Boulder campus.

Over the next decade, the Burns team will send a rover aboard a lunar land vessel at the back of the moon. The rover will roll on the rugged and rough surface – featuring a mountain higher than any other planet – to set up a network of radio telescopes with the help of the human.

Astronauts will be able to control the unique robotic arm of the rover from an orbital lunar outpost called Gateway, built by an international consortium of space agencies. The platform will provide access and access to the moon's surface and serve as a refueling station for space missions.

The goal is to give astronauts control of the rover "faster and more like a video game," said Ben Mellinkoff, a graduate student at the university. His project is telerobotics or the use of artificial intelligence to give users better control of robotic movements remotely.

"It has a lot of potential, especially with regard to space exploration," he says.

The rover, built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will plant shoe-box-sized telescopes on the lunar regolith – dust, soil, and rocky debris that cover its surface. Freed from the noisy radio interference and light that hinders space observations, telescopes will scrutinize the cosmic void, recalling the initial formation of our solar system, explains Burns.

PROTOTYPE ROBOT

Working in a small laboratory on the Boulder campus, Mellinkoff and two other graduate students built a prototype of the robot named Armstrong (named after the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong). It is made from computer parts and is powered by two modified mobile phone chargers.

During a recent visit, Mellinkoff controlled the robotic arm with the help of an X-box game controller, guiding him to an assortment of objects the size of which he had. a shoe created with 3D printing and resembling radio telescopes to plant on the moon.

"This will really be a platform for us to start different scientific studies that we could not do from the surface of the Earth," said Keith Tauscher, a graduate student in physics.

Tauscher is working on a lunar orbiter designed to take advantage of the radio silence of the hidden face of the moon and discover when the first stars and black holes formed during the formation of the universe. The laboratory dubbed this mission "the Pathfinder polarimeter, or" DAPPER ".

Work done in Boulder and elsewhere underscores NASA's plan to establish a lasting presence on the moon, unlike the fleeting Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

In March, Vice President Mike Pence announced an accelerated schedule to put humans on the moon in 2024 "by all means", halving the agency's previous goal for 2028 and putting the researchers and businesses to overcrowding in the new race to space.

Americans are not alone in their last moon quest, unlike half a century ago. In January, the National Space Administration of China landed on a satellite located on the other side of the moon for the long-term purpose of building a base on the moon. India had to send a rover to the moon this month.

Another key difference between the Apollo program and the Artemis program, when NASA head Jim Bridenstine named the new lunar initiative in May, is to tap into business partners such as Elon Musk SpaceX and Jeff's Blue Origin Bezos. These companies are working to reduce the cost of rocket launches with a long-term ambition to carry out their own projects on the Moon and possibly on Mars.

"This is a new way of working in which the private sector is intimately connected to NASA," said Burns.

He predicts that in about 20 years, the Moon will be dotted with inflatable hotels for tourists with deep pockets and mining sites where robotic drills will dig under the south pole of the moon to find chilled water that can be synthesized into fuel for missions back to Earth on Mars.