Related papers: Does the Lunar Surface Still Offer Value As a Site…
The lunar surface has historically been considered an optimal site for a broad range of astronomical telescopes. That assumption, which has come to be somewhat reflexive, is critically examined in this paper and found to be poorly…
The lunar surface is a compelling location for large, distributed optical facilities, with significant advantages over orbital facilities for high spatial resolution astrophysics. The serious development of mission concepts is timely…
Motivated by efforts to return humanity to the Moon, three cases are reviewed for X-ray astronomy from the lunar surface: (1) Facilitation of ambitious engineering designs including high throughput telescopes, long focal length optics and…
A radio telescope placed in lunar orbit, or on the surface of the Moon's farside, could be of great value to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The advantage of such a telescope is that it would be shielded by the body of…
We look at what astronomy from the Moon might be like in the visible over the next few decades. The Moon offers the possibility of installing large telescopes or interferometers with instruments larger than those on orbiting telescopes. We…
The lunar geological record has much to tell us about the earliest history of the Solar System, the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, the geological evolution of rocky planets, and the near-Earth cosmic environment throughout…
A human-robotic "Moon Village" would offer significant scientific opportunities by providing an infrastructure on the lunar surface. An analogy would be the way in which human outposts in Antarctica facilitate research activities across…
Numerous missions planned for the next decade are likely to target a handful of smal sites of interest on the Moon's surface, creating risks of crowding and interference at these locations. The Moon presents finite and scarce areas with…
Utilisation of the material and energy resources of the Solar System will be essential for the development of a sustainable space economy and associated infrastructure. Science will be a major beneficiary of a space economy, even if its…
A new era of lunar exploration has begun with participation of all major space agencies. This activity brings opportunities for revolutionary science experiments and observatories on the Moon. The idea of a lunar gravitational-wave detector…
The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion\$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream…
The lunar surface has been exposed to the space environment for billions of years and during this time has accumulated records of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. These include solar wind particles and the cosmogenic products of…
By volume, more than 99% of the solar system has not been imaged at radio frequencies. Almost all of this space (the solar wind) can be traversed by fast electrons producing radio emissions at frequencies lower than the terrestrial…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
In recent years, the Moon has emerged as an unparalleled extraterrestrial testbed for advancing cuttingedge technological and scientific research critical to enabling sustained human presence on its surface and supporting future…
Space observatories are having major impacts on our knowledge of the Universe, from the Solar neighborhood to the cosmological background, opening many new windows out of reach to ground-based observatories. Celestial objects emit all over…
Many science missions require an unobstructed view of space and a stable thermal environment but lack the technical or programmatic resources to reach orbits that satisfy these needs. This paper presents a high Earth orbit in 2:1 resonance…
More precise lunar and Martian ranging will enable unprecedented tests of Einstein's theory of General Relativity and well as lunar and planetary science. NASA is currently planning several missions to return to the Moon, and it is natural…
Lunar laser ranging has provided many of the best tests of gravitation since the first Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon. The march to higher precision continues to this day, now entering the millimeter regime, and promising continued…
The lunar surface allows a unique way forward in cosmology, to go beyond current limits. The far side provides an unexcelled radio-quiet environment for probing the dark ages via 21 cm interferometry to seek elusive clues on the nature of…