This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel with my colleague Bob Zimmerman, heaps the website behind the black.

We're going to the moon via Italy.

How are we doing that, Bob?

This is part of capitalism space.

Since in the last three years, the European Space Agency and the members there are in Europe,

the nations, have been shifting away from using government-run operations to do things, but

instead awarding contracts to private companies to accomplish the same task for less money

and faster. So the Italian Space Agency has now awarded a contract to an Italian-slash UK company called Blue Sky Space.

And this is a contract to design a constellation of radio telescopes.

These are radio telescopes on satellites, a constellation of them, that would orbit the moon

and be designed to do radio observations of the very earliest radio emissions from the Big Bang.

What's interesting about this is that even though the satellites would be orbiting the moon,

the radio observations would probably be taking place when the satellites are on the far side

behind the moon so that that blocks out all the radio emissions coming from

earth.

It's a clean environment, quiet.

So your radio observations, you can observe very faint radio signals.

So that's the concept.

And the Italian Space Agency has hired a private Italian company to build or at least design

these satellites.

Now whether they'll actually fly, of course, this is a, you know, that's another story entirely.

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