In recent years, NASA has shown support for these ideas at levels never seen before. The space agency has even funded studies on several early proposals to finally build an Arecibo-like observatory on the Moon. Of these proposals, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) echoes some of the same ideas Drake brought up a generation ago.
But unlike previous mission designers imagined, the latest iterations of Moon-based telescopes wouldn't rely on astronauts to construct them. Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader on the LCRT project team — says they intend to build LCRT using simple lunar rovers like the ones NASA has already designed.
LCRT would land a spacecraft full of rovers outside the crater. These would then retrieve the support wires, take them to the crater rim, and assemble a mesh system spanning approximately 0.6 miles (1 kilometer). However, the whole system would have to fit inside a single lunar-landing spacecraft, like Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.
By depending on robots instead of astronauts, the project can save a significant amount of money. Any mission involving astronauts requires extensive — and expensive — safety precautions. Every potential problem requires extra scrutiny and engineered safeguards. For example, sharp edges can slice through spacesuits, so they're avoided on crewed flights. But rounded edges don't allow you to maximize cargo space, which you'd want to do for a robotic trip to the Moon.
NASA has also already begun testing a versatile model of a rover called DuAxel, which could be used for a number of different lunar missions. Among other things, DuAxel can climb crater walls. And as a bonus, it's relatively cheap.
“If we send 10 of these robots and two of them die; it’s fine,” Bandyopadhyay says. “Two of them are dead, but eight robots are still working. It’s not like that with astronauts.”