Hi, I'm Iroflato, and you're listening to Science Friday.

In early April, all eyes were on the moon, right, with the lunar flyby of the Artemis

Space Mission, and they got an unprecedented view of the lunar far side.

But researchers are working to put eyes on the far side of the moon in another way

by delivering a tiny radio telescope there. It's called Lucy Knight, and joining me to talk about it

is Anja Slosar, science lead for the mission. Welcome to Science Friday.

Hello, thank you very much. Anja, describe this little radio telescope for me, if you will.

Okay, so we're putting like a small pathfinder radio telescope called Lucidite on the lunar far side.

And really, it's a pathfinder.

It's the simplest thing you can imagine that can receive radio signals from the outer space.

So people have been dreaming about putting a great telescope on the moon because moon has a special

property. Then on the far side of the moon, you're at the same time shield it from the earth

and shield it from the sun. And that's supposed to make it one of the best observatories for the

radio frequency observations

in the entire solar system. Okay. And especially so at the very low frequencies,

where basically observations from the ground are very, very difficult. If you go below 50

megahertz, observations for the ground, basically it's like looking up from the bottom of the

swing pool, Everything is blurred.

It's a total mess.

So I should not be picturing this big giant aricebo-type radio dish.

We're talking about a demonstration project, a little project, right?

Yeah, it's a little project.

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