Over The Horizon

Watching from the Moon

Experience in operating observatories on high mountaintops may prove useful in developing automated remote facilities on the Moon, according to a recent presentation made at Canterbury University by Russell Genet of AutoScope Corporation.

There are already just under two dozen automatic observatories on Earth that operate untended by staff. Genet says that these could be the springboard from which a new generation of space-based, fixed location observatories could evolve.

Fixed location stations have a number of advantages over observatories free-flying in orbit, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Placing an observatory on the Moon or an asteroid means that it would not need its own stabilisation system, reducing the amount of equipment, weight, cost and human back-up required.

Technicians would not have to check telescope pointing commands from astronomers -- they do this for free-flying facilities to ensure that any such commands don't "tumble" the observatory beyond recovery. Routine, standard operations can be automated, allowing astronomers to access the facility through current computer links.

Genet says that if a lunar observatory was established, it could be in conjunction with an occasionally manned lunar outpost. This would provide opportunities to check the equipment, fix it and upgrade it.

"The costs of transporting the initial astronomical equipment to already manned locations would, presumably, be modest, as such equipment would represent an insignificant fraction of the total weight that would be required to establish and maintain an manned outpost in space."

Initially, telescopes could be sent to the Moon before any manned outpost was established. While an expensive option, it would enable the development of a large corps of experienced observers familiar with the use of such a facility.

"Their direct operation, from their home institutions without supporting staff, of such remote lunar observatories would not seem much different to them than the robotic observatories they had been operating for years at remote mountaintops or...the South Pole."

Eventually, Genet sees the chance to develop low-cost, off-the-shelf observatories which could be purchased by universities or other educational organisations.

"High school students directly operating a highly capable space observatory all by themselves? Why not!" he says.