Human technology such as cell phones and broadcast towers emit radio waves all the time spaceAstronomers estimate that this distinctive signature of humanity has swept across the Earth 75 nearby star systems, signaling to any alert alien civilization that Earth hosts a technologically advanced species. And while scientists have been listening to continuous radio chatter from our planet for a long time, in late February they heard it for the first time from the moon. time.
A small radio telescope aboard the Odysseus spacecraft, the first commercial vehicle that successfully landed on the moon on February 22, they recorded emitted radio waves Earth for 1.5 hours. The experiment, called ROLSES, made its observations from the Odysseus landing site near the Malapert A crater, which is about 297 kilometers away. away from the moonSouth Pole.
Astrophysicist Jack Burns of the University of Colorado Boulder, who is a co-investigator of ROLSES, described the moment as “the dawn of radio.” astronomy from the Moon.” By studying the Earth as an exoplanetAstronomers hope to look for similar fingerprints from planets around others starswhich would be a potential sign of intelligent life.
Speaking Monday (June 10) at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Wisconsin, Burns pulled up an image on a screen that showed tiny white dots, mostly horizontal lines, on a pitch-black background. “That’s Earth,” he said.
The white spots are radio signals from transmitters on Earth recorded by the four antennas of the ROLSES experiment. It’s “a really good ‘frequency selfie’ of the Earth.” […] it’s unprecedented” when it comes to looking at Earth at radio wavelengths, Burns added.
Related: Intuitive Machines’ private Odysseus lander ‘permanently faded’ on lunar surface as historic mission ends
During its historic landing on February 22, the 14-foot (4.3-meter) spacecraft Odysseus descended faster than planned and flipped onto its side, likely because broke one or two Tim Crain, co-founder and CTO of Intuitive Machines, of his landing legs said earlier. As a result of this unexpected orientation, the spacecraft’s antennas were not pointed back at Earth, greatly reducing the rate at which data could be sent.
Perhaps because of those problems, the ROLSES instrument recorded a total of two hours of data instead of the eight days astronomers had hoped for, Burns said Monday. The reduced time would affect the signal-to-noise ratio of the collected data, he added. It was not immediately clear whether researchers would be able to decode the transmissions to determine the content of those radio waves.
The researchers also collected a random 20 minutes of data when one of Odyssey’s antennas overheated slightly and popped out of its safe place on the lander. “So we took advantage of that, turned on our radio spectrometer and got some data,” Burns said.
After a week of surgery on MoonOdysseus went silent on February 29 after sunset hit the landing site, which was expected given that the spacecraft was not designed to survive the cold lunar night. When sunlight again shone on Odysseus’ solar panels on March 20, Intuitive machines, the Houston-based company that built the spacecraft, listened but did not hear its wake-up call. Three days later, the company he declared “Odie faded permanently after making history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the moon.”
Astronomers, including Burns, are now anticipating the launch of another small radio telescope that should launch to the far side of the moon in 2026. The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night, or LuSEE-Night for short, is designed to detect radio waves. from 13.4 billion years ago, a mysterious era when universe and its first stars and galaxies were shrouded in a primordial hydrogen mist. Astronomers refer to this epoch as cosmic dark ageswho The James Webb Space Telescope only recently started researching.