Giant lunar telescopes

Plan afoot to construct colossal mirrors on the Moon.

NASA scientists have devised a way to make a 50-metre telescope on the Moon, and all it needs is a little bit of carbon, some epoxy and lots of lunar dust.

The capabilities of a 50-meter telescope on the Moon are immense, according to NASA. From the Moon, astronomers could make more detailed observations of galaxies to see how the universe was created, among many other observational projects.

Scientists working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center - Douglas Rabin, Michael Van Steenberg, and Ron Oliversen - stumbled upon the innovation as part of an experiment with dust.

By substituting carbon nanotubes (tiny tubular structures made of pure carbon) for the carbon-fibre composites, they then mixed small amounts of carbon nanotubes and epoxies (glue-like materials) with crushed rock that has the same composition and grain size as lunar dust. To their surprise, they had created a very strong material with the consistency of concrete, which could be used instead of glass to make mirrors.

They next applied additional layers of epoxy and spun the material at room temperature. The result was a 12-inch-wide mirror blank with the parabolic shape of a telescope mirror. All of this was achieved with minimal effort and cost.

"After that, all we needed to do was coat the mirror blank with a small amount of aluminium, and voilà, we had a highly reflective telescope mirror," said Rabin. "Our method could be scaled-up on the Moon, using the ubiquitous lunar dust, to create giant telescope mirrors up to 50 metres in diameter."

The largest optical telescope in the world right now is the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias in the Canary Islands, which would be dwarfed by a 50-metre telescope.

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