Human technology such as cell phones and cell towers continuously emit radio waves roomand astronomers estimate that this telltale feature has penetrated humanity 75 nearby galaxies, which is a signal to any vigilant alien civilization that Earth is home to a technologically advanced species. And although scientists have long listened to our planet’s incessant radio chatter, they heard it for the first time from the moon in late February. time.
A small radio telescope aboard the Odysseus spacecraft, the first commercial vehicle to do so landed successfully on the moon on February 22, recorded radio waves radiated Soil for 1.5 hours. The experiment, called ROLSES, made its observations from Odysseus’s landing site near the Malapert A crater, which is about 180 miles (297 kilometers) away. away from the moon‘s south pole.
Astrophysicist Jack Burns of the University of Colorado Boulder, a ROLSES co-investigator, described the moment as the “dawn of radio waves.” astronomy of the moon.” By studying the Earth as one exoplanetastronomers hope to look for similar fingerprints from planets around other planets 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 the screen in which small white dots appeared scattered across a pitch-black background, forming mostly horizontal lines. ‘That’s the earth. ” he said.
The white dots are radio signals from transmitters on Earth, as recorded by the four antennas of the ROLSES experiment. It’s “a really good ‘frequency selfie’ of Earth […] that’s unprecedented to date” when it comes to looking at Earth in radio wavelengths, Burns added.
Related: Intuitive Machines’ private lunar lander Odysseus is ‘permanently faded’ on the moon’s surface as its historic mission ends
During its historic landing on February 22, the 4.3-meter-long Odysseus spacecraft descended faster than planned and tipped on its side, likely because it one or two broken of his landing legs after hitting a patch of lunar terrain, Tim Crain, co-founder and CTO of Intuitive Machines, previously said. As a result of this unexpected orientation, the spacecraft’s antennas were not pointed toward Earth, significantly reducing the speed at which data could be transmitted.
Perhaps as a result of these problems, the ROLSES instrument recorded data for a total of two hours instead of the eight days astronomers had hoped for, Burns said Monday. The shorter time would affect the signal-to-noise ratio of the data collected, he added. It was not immediately clear whether the researchers would be able to decode the transmissions to determine the content of those radio waves.
The researchers also collected a whopping 20 minutes of data when one of Odysseus’ antennas slightly overheated and shot out of its safe spot on the lander. “So we took advantage of that, turned on our radio spectrometer and we collected some data,” Burns said.
After a week of operations the moonOn February 29, Odysseus fell silent after sunset reached his landing site, which was expected since the spacecraft was not designed to survive the cold lunar night. When sunlight shone on Odysseus’ solar panels again on March 20, Intuitive machines, the Houston-based company that built the spacecraft, listened for the wake-up call but couldn’t hear it. Three days later, the company declared “Odie has permanently faded after cementing his legacy in history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the moon.”
Astronomers, including Burns, are now looking forward to the launch of a new small radio telescope expected to launch to the far side of the moon in 2026. The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night, or LuSEE-Night for short, is being designed to detect radio waves. from 13.4 billion years ago, a mysterious era in which the universe and the first stars and galaxies were shrouded in a primordial mist of hydrogen. Astronomers call this era the cosmic dark ageswhich the James Webb Space Telescope has only recently started investigating.