# The Moon Could Become a Radio Sanctuary for Astronomy

An episode of [Bedtime Astronomy](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1736397134), 5 Sep 2026, 40 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74570933/moonp.mp3

Scientists are proposing LFT3, a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon that could escape Earth’s radio interference and search for faint signals such as alien technosignatures and exoplanetary auroras. Researchers argue the mission should be deployed before growing lunar activity contaminates this uniquely quiet environment. Thank you for listening to Bedtime Astronomy — your guide to the cosmos. New episodes on space exploration, NASA missions & the latest astronomy breakthroughs. This episode includes AI-generated content.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
[0:07] Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
[0:12] Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
[0:16] Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
[0:20] Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
[0:22] Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
[0:27] Speaker 2: You know, when most of us picture the search for
[0:29] Speaker 2: alien life, or even just the process of listening to
[0:33] Speaker 2: the deep cosmos, there's this very romantic image that comes
[0:37] Speaker 2: to mind. We imagine these these massive, pristine satellite dishes
[0:42] Speaker 2: out in the middle of a desert somewhere where point
[0:45] Speaker 2: it up at a completely silent, star filled night sky.
[0:49] Speaker 2: It feels like standing on the edge of a perfectly
[0:52] Speaker 2: calm glass like ocean, you know, holding your breass, just
[0:55] Speaker 2: waiting to hear a single tiny splash for miles away.
[1:00] Speaker 2: Are evocative image, But our mission today is to figure
[1:02] Speaker 2: out how we can actually achieve that kind of silence again,
[1:06] Speaker 2: because the reality we live in now is entirely.
[1:08] Speaker 3: Different, completely different.
[1:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to explore this incredibly urgent ticking
[1:13] Speaker 2: clock race to build a specialized radio telescope on the
[1:18] Speaker 2: far side of our moon. We'll get into the massive
[1:20] Speaker 2: engineering hurdle standing in the way of getting it there,
[1:23] Speaker 2: and the honestly mind bending phenomena we might finally hear
[1:26] Speaker 2: if we can actually pull it off.
[1:28] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating proposal.
[1:30] Speaker 2: But to really grasp why this is so urgent, we
[1:33] Speaker 2: have to talk about what happened to our quiet ocean.
[1:36] Speaker 3: Well, the ocean isn't quiet anymore. I mean, if we
[1:39] Speaker 3: stick with that analogy, the water is churning.
[1:41] Speaker 2: Right.
[1:42] Speaker 3: There are speedboats racing back and forth, you know, cruise
[1:44] Speaker 3: ships blaring their horns. The electromagnetic landscape of our planet
[1:49] Speaker 3: has fundamentally transformed over the last few decades.
[1:53] Speaker 2: Which brings us to nineteen seventy seven.
[1:55] Speaker 3: Ah.
[1:56] Speaker 2: Yes, I want to set the scene here, because nineteen
[1:58] Speaker 2: seventy seven is basically the bench for what we've lost.
[2:01] Speaker 2: This is the year of the famous Wow signal. Now
[2:05] Speaker 2: I know the name, and I know it's one of
[2:07] Speaker 2: the greatest lingering mysteries in modern astronomy. But let's walk
[2:11] Speaker 2: through exactly what happened that night.
[2:12] Speaker 3: Right, So it was August fifteen, nineteen seventy seven. Okay,
[2:15] Speaker 3: an astronomer named Jerry Emon was reviewing these data printouts
[2:20] Speaker 3: from the Big Year Radio telescope at Ohio State University.
[2:23] Speaker 2: And Big Ear. That was a pretty substantial telescope for its.
[2:26] Speaker 3: Time, right it was. It was massive, and at the
[2:28] Speaker 3: time they were surveying the sky, just sort of sweeping
[2:31] Speaker 3: across the heavens as the Earth rotated, listening to the
[2:33] Speaker 3: background static of the universe, and suddenly, for a period
[2:37] Speaker 3: of exactly seventy two seconds, the telescope picked up this continuous,
[2:42] Speaker 3: incredibly powerful radio emission coming from the direction of the
[2:46] Speaker 3: constellation Sagittarius.
[2:48] Speaker 2: Wow. And it wasn't just random noise, right, there was
[2:51] Speaker 2: something really specific about the frequency of that signal that
[2:54] Speaker 2: made everybody's jaw drop. Yeah.
[2:55] Speaker 3: It was detected at a frequency of roughly fourteen hundred
[2:58] Speaker 3: and twenty megahertz. Okay, in radio astronomy, that is an
[3:01] Speaker 3: incredibly significant number. It's known as the hydrogen line.
[3:04] Speaker 2: The hydrogen line. What does that mean?
[3:05] Speaker 3: Exactly? Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, right,
[3:08] Speaker 3: and naturally resonating neutral hydrogen atoms they emit radiation at
[3:13] Speaker 3: exactly that frequency.
[3:15] Speaker 2: Oh, I see, because it's.
[3:16] Speaker 3: So common scientists have long hypothesized that if an intelligent
[3:20] Speaker 3: alien civilization wanted to broadcast a beacon, you know, something
[3:24] Speaker 3: that other scientists across the galaxy would logically be tuning into.
[3:27] Speaker 2: Right, they would use the most common frequency exactly.
[3:30] Speaker 3: They would broadcast at fourteen twenty megahertz.
[3:32] Speaker 2: So it's like leaving a message on the Universal Emergency
[3:35] Speaker 2: Channel precisely.
[3:37] Speaker 3: And this signal was loud, it was continuous, It rose
[3:41] Speaker 3: in intensity and then fell precisely the way a signal
[3:45] Speaker 3: from deep space should, as the telescope's field of view
[3:49] Speaker 3: just swept right across it.
[3:50] Speaker 2: Okay, so it wasn't just a blip. It had structure, Yes.
[3:53] Speaker 3: And heman was so shocked when he saw the the
[3:57] Speaker 3: alphanumeric representation of the signal intensity on the computer print out. Yeah,
[4:02] Speaker 3: he literally circled it with a red pen and wrote
[4:04] Speaker 3: Wow in the margin.
[4:06] Speaker 2: He's the name, right. But here is the tragedy of
[4:09] Speaker 2: the WOW signal, and really the core problem driving our
[4:12] Speaker 2: entire discussion today. Earth in nineteen seventy seven was a
[4:15] Speaker 2: fundamentally different place.
[4:16] Speaker 3: Oh.
[4:17] Speaker 2: Absolutely, if that exact same signal, you know, that exact
[4:20] Speaker 2: burst of high energy radio waves hit Earth. This afternoon.
[4:24] Speaker 2: The astronomers wouldn't circle it in red pen No, they
[4:27] Speaker 2: would have They wouldn't even see it, probably wouldn't even
[4:29] Speaker 2: move the needle on our current instruments.
[4:30] Speaker 3: It would be entirely swallowed by the background noise of
[4:33] Speaker 3: modern civilization.
[4:34] Speaker 2: I was trying to think of how to describe this,
[4:36] Speaker 2: and it feels like trying to hear a pin drop
[4:38] Speaker 2: in the middle of a crowded, chaotic heavy metal concert.
[4:43] Speaker 3: That's a very apt way to visualize radio frequency interference
[4:47] Speaker 3: or RFI.
[4:48] Speaker 2: But it's worse than that, right, because the heavy metal
[4:50] Speaker 2: man isn't just loud. They keep stacking more and more
[4:52] Speaker 2: amplifiers on the stage every single day.
[4:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, those amplifiers you're talking about, those are our own technologies.
[4:58] Speaker 3: Think about what surrounds US now report to nineteen seventy seven.
[5:01] Speaker 2: It's everywhere, it really is.
[5:03] Speaker 3: We have launched massive constellations of low earth orbit satellites
[5:09] Speaker 3: specifically designed to beam broadband Internet down to the surface.
[5:13] Speaker 2: Right like all the Starling stuff exactly.
[5:15] Speaker 3: And we have terrestrial weather radar systems, aviation radar, military
[5:19] Speaker 3: arrays just sweeping the skies constantly.
[5:22] Speaker 2: Wow.
[5:23] Speaker 3: Add to that, the cellular networks you know, four G,
[5:25] Speaker 3: five G, along with every broadcasting station, Bluetooth device, and
[5:29] Speaker 3: Wi Fi router on the planet.
[5:31] Speaker 2: It's just endless.
[5:31] Speaker 3: We've wrapped the Earth in a constant, dense, overlapping hum
[5:36] Speaker 3: of human technological chatter.
[5:38] Speaker 2: So we're practically deafening ourselves to the rest of the universe.
[5:41] Speaker 3: We are the faint, delicate whispers coming from distant star systems.
[5:46] Speaker 3: They simply cannot compete with the screaming transmitters we've built
[5:49] Speaker 3: in our own backyard. Man, but the human made noise
[5:53] Speaker 3: is actually only half the problem.
[5:55] Speaker 2: Wait, really, how can it get worse than that?
[5:58] Speaker 3: Well, even if we could somehow convince the entire planet
[6:00] Speaker 3: to flip a master switch, you know, like if we
[6:04] Speaker 3: turned off every single satellite, every cell tower, and every
[6:08] Speaker 3: router on Earth for one hour.
[6:10] Speaker 2: Okay, absolute silence on Earth.
[6:11] Speaker 3: Right, absolute silence, we still wouldn't be able to hear
[6:14] Speaker 3: a vast portion of the universe from the ground. We
[6:16] Speaker 3: have a natural barrier to fight against.
[6:18] Speaker 2: Okay, I need some help understanding this. How can nature
[6:21] Speaker 2: be blocking radio waves? Because I mean, we look up
[6:25] Speaker 2: at the night sky and it seems completely transparent.
[6:28] Speaker 3: Visually, it is mostly transparent, right, but electromagnetically, our atmosphere
[6:33] Speaker 3: is a highly active shield, specifically a region called the
[6:37] Speaker 3: iono sphere the ionosphere.
[6:39] Speaker 2: Okay, let's break that down. This is a layer of
[6:40] Speaker 2: the upper atmosphere right like somewhere up where the space
[6:43] Speaker 2: station orbits.
[6:44] Speaker 3: Yeah. It spans from roughly thirty miles to six hundred
[6:46] Speaker 3: miles above the surface. In this region, extreme ultraviolet and
[6:50] Speaker 3: X ray radiation from the Sun continuously bombards the thin
[6:54] Speaker 3: atmospheric gases.
[6:56] Speaker 2: So the Sun is basically cooking it pretty much.
[6:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, and solar energy actually strips electrons right off the
[7:02] Speaker 3: gas atoms.
[7:03] Speaker 2: Oh wow.
[7:04] Speaker 3: It creates a sea of free electrons and positively charged ions.
[7:09] Speaker 3: Hence the name ionosphere makes sense. It is essentially a
[7:13] Speaker 3: layer of plasma hugging the.
[7:14] Speaker 2: Earth, and plasma interacts with radio waves.
[7:17] Speaker 3: It interacts profoundly because those particles carry an electric charge,
[7:21] Speaker 3: they are highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields. When certain low
[7:25] Speaker 3: frequency radio waves from deep space hit this plasma layer,
[7:29] Speaker 3: the free electrons in the ionosphere are forced to oscillate.
[7:32] Speaker 2: I see.
[7:33] Speaker 3: This oscillation absorbs the energy of the incoming radio wave
[7:37] Speaker 3: or in many cases outright reflects it back into space. Wow.
[7:41] Speaker 3: For lower frequency radio astronomy. The ionosphere acts like a giant,
[7:45] Speaker 3: dense mirror wrapped around the planet.
[7:47] Speaker 2: Wait, is this why AM radio works the way it does.
[7:50] Speaker 2: I remember as a kid on roadships at night suddenly
[7:53] Speaker 2: being able to pick up a baseball game on the
[7:55] Speaker 2: AM dial from a city hundreds of miles away.
[7:58] Speaker 3: Yes, that is the exact same physical mechanism at play,
[8:02] Speaker 3: just in reverse. No way that your local AM station
[8:05] Speaker 3: is broadcasting a low frequency radio wave up into the sky,
[8:09] Speaker 3: it hits the ionosphere, bounces off that plasma mirror, and
[8:12] Speaker 3: reflects back down to Earth far over the horizon.
[8:15] Speaker 2: That's wild. So it's bouncing the signal around the curve
[8:18] Speaker 2: of the Earth exactly.
[8:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's incredibly useful for terrestrial communication, but it is
[8:24] Speaker 3: an absolute nightmare for.
[8:25] Speaker 2: Astronomy because it works both ways.
[8:27] Speaker 3: Right means of those same low frequencies originating from distant galaxies,
[8:31] Speaker 3: they hit the top of the ionosphere and bounce away
[8:34] Speaker 3: before they ever reach our telescopes on the ground.
[8:36] Speaker 2: Oh man, so we are doubly deaf.
[8:39] Speaker 3: We really are.
[8:39] Speaker 2: We're actively deafened by the heavy metal concert of our
[8:42] Speaker 2: own technology, and we are physically shielded by our own
[8:46] Speaker 2: atmospheric plasma mirror.
[8:48] Speaker 3: That sums it up perfectly, which means.
[8:50] Speaker 2: If we really want to hear the universe, you know,
[8:52] Speaker 2: if we want to seriously search for the next Wow
[8:55] Speaker 2: signal or listen to the low frequency humming of the cosmos,
[8:59] Speaker 2: we need the ultimate soundproof room. We have to get
[9:02] Speaker 2: off the planet.
[9:03] Speaker 3: And not just off the planet. You can't just put
[9:06] Speaker 3: a radio telescope in Earth orbit like we did with
[9:09] Speaker 3: the Hubble or James web Space telescope, because.
[9:11] Speaker 2: An orbiting telescope would just be flying right through the
[9:14] Speaker 2: heavy metal concert precisely, it would be right in the
[9:16] Speaker 2: middle of all the GPS and Starlink satellites exactly.
[9:20] Speaker 3: You need a place that is free from atmospheric blocking,
[9:24] Speaker 3: completely removed from terrestrial satellites, and physically shielded from the
[9:28] Speaker 3: radio emissions of Earth itself.
[9:31] Speaker 2: And where is that.
[9:32] Speaker 3: There is only one place in our immediate neighborhood that
[9:35] Speaker 3: fits the bill. The far side of the Moon.
[9:37] Speaker 2: The far side which is often incorrectly called the dark side.
[9:41] Speaker 2: Let's clear that up first.
[9:42] Speaker 3: Good idea.
[9:43] Speaker 2: It gets just as much sunlight as the side we
[9:45] Speaker 2: see right it does.
[9:46] Speaker 3: It experiences a regular day and night cycle, just like
[9:49] Speaker 3: the near side. The reason we call it the far
[9:51] Speaker 3: side is due to a gravitational phenomenon known as tidal.
[9:55] Speaker 2: Locking title locking.
[9:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, over millions of years, the Earth's in immense gravity
[10:01] Speaker 3: essentially applied a breaking force to the Moon's rotation.
[10:04] Speaker 2: It slowed it down right.
[10:06] Speaker 3: So today the Moon rotates on its axis at the
[10:09] Speaker 3: exact same rate that it orbits the Earth. Oh, I say,
[10:12] Speaker 3: because those two motions are perfectly synchronized, the Moon always
[10:15] Speaker 3: keeps the exact same face pointed toward us.
[10:18] Speaker 2: Which means there is an entire hemisphere of our closest
[10:20] Speaker 2: celestial neighbor that never ever has a direct line of
[10:25] Speaker 2: sight to Earth.
[10:26] Speaker 3: And that is what makes it the holy Grail for
[10:28] Speaker 3: radio astronomy. Wow, when you are standing on the far
[10:31] Speaker 3: side of the Moon, you have more than two thousand
[10:33] Speaker 3: miles of solid, incredibly dense lunar rock and dust sitting
[10:38] Speaker 3: directly between you and the Earth.
[10:39] Speaker 2: That is quite a shield.
[10:41] Speaker 3: It is. That mass acts as an unparalleled physical shield.
[10:45] Speaker 3: It blocks the weather, radar, the cell phone towers, the satellites,
[10:48] Speaker 3: all of it.
[10:48] Speaker 2: It's just completely cut off.
[10:50] Speaker 3: Yes, it is arguably the most pristine radio quiet environment
[10:54] Speaker 3: in the entire Inner Solar System.
[10:56] Speaker 2: It sounds like an absolute paradise for an astronomer. But
[11:00] Speaker 2: here is the massive catch, and this is the ticking
[11:03] Speaker 2: clock we mentioned at the start of the show. Okay,
[11:05] Speaker 2: let's unpack this. This perfect, pristine, naturally soundproof room has
[11:10] Speaker 2: an expiration date.
[11:11] Speaker 3: It does an expiration date that is arriving much faster
[11:15] Speaker 3: than most people, even within the scientific community, are prepared.
[11:18] Speaker 2: For the year twenty thirty. What exactly happens in twenty
[11:22] Speaker 2: thirty that ruins the quiet?
[11:24] Speaker 3: Well, it's not one single event in twenty thirty, but
[11:27] Speaker 3: rather the culative effect of a massive upcoming expansion in
[11:30] Speaker 3: lunar exploration. Okay, we are entering a new era of spaceflight.
[11:34] Speaker 3: You know, NASA's Artemis program is aiming to establish a
[11:37] Speaker 3: sustained human presence on and around the.
[11:40] Speaker 2: Moon, right going back to the Moon to stay exactly.
[11:42] Speaker 3: And you have the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program or
[11:45] Speaker 3: CLPSPS of CO, which is essentially contracting private companies to
[11:49] Speaker 3: send fleets of robotic landers and rovers to the lunar surface.
[11:53] Speaker 3: So it's going to get crowded very The European Space
[11:55] Speaker 3: Agency China Change Program, Commercial Mining startups. They are all
[12:00] Speaker 3: to the Moon in the next few years.
[12:01] Speaker 2: And to do all that exploring, to control those rovers
[12:04] Speaker 2: and I don't know, stream that high definition video back
[12:07] Speaker 2: to mission control, they need communication networks.
[12:10] Speaker 3: They need infrastructure, satellites and lunar orbit to relay signals,
[12:15] Speaker 3: surface to surface communication nodes, navigation beacons. Oh no, all
[12:20] Speaker 3: of this impending lunar infrastructure is going to introduce permanent,
[12:24] Speaker 3: overlapping radio frequency interference to the far side of the Moon.
[12:28] Speaker 2: Wow, you've hit on this incredible, almost tragic paradox. It
[12:32] Speaker 2: really is the scientific drive to explore the Moon, you know,
[12:36] Speaker 2: to dig into its soil, map its craters, and push
[12:39] Speaker 2: human boundaries. That very drive is going to inherently destroy
[12:43] Speaker 2: the only environment we have that is required for deep
[12:45] Speaker 2: space radio astronomy.
[12:47] Speaker 3: It is a profound friction between two different types of
[12:49] Speaker 3: scientific progress.
[12:50] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[12:51] Speaker 3: On one hand, you have the geologists and the aerospace
[12:53] Speaker 3: engineers who view the Moon as a destination to be
[12:56] Speaker 3: conquered and studied up close. Sure, on the other hand,
[12:59] Speaker 3: you have the astral physicists who view the Moon not
[13:02] Speaker 3: as a destination but as an observational platform, a quiet
[13:06] Speaker 3: window looking outward.
[13:07] Speaker 2: It's like we finally managed to hike out to this pristine,
[13:11] Speaker 2: untouched wilderness to record the delicate songs of endangered birds.
[13:17] Speaker 2: But we decide we have to pave a massive super
[13:19] Speaker 2: highway right through the middle of the forest just to
[13:22] Speaker 2: deliver the microphones.
[13:23] Speaker 3: And analogy holds up perfectly, especially when you consider the
[13:26] Speaker 3: permanence of it.
[13:27] Speaker 2: It's permanent.
[13:28] Speaker 3: Yeah, Once those lunar relay satellites are in orbit and
[13:31] Speaker 3: those autonomous rovers are broadcasting across the surface, you can't
[13:35] Speaker 3: just turn them off.
[13:35] Speaker 2: The quiet is just gone.
[13:37] Speaker 3: The radio quiet environment will be gone forever. Man, But
[13:40] Speaker 3: we also have to acknowledge the reality here. Ignoring an
[13:44] Speaker 3: entire hemisphin of our nearest celestial neighbor simply goes against
[13:48] Speaker 3: human nature, of course, and the mandate of scientific discovery.
[13:52] Speaker 3: We cannot freeze lunar exploration just to keep the sky quiet.
[13:56] Speaker 2: So nobody is realistically advocating to cancel all uner missions forever.
[14:01] Speaker 2: The geologists get to have their.
[14:02] Speaker 3: Rovers, they do, which means the radio astronomers are left
[14:06] Speaker 3: with a very brutal reality, which is they have an
[14:08] Speaker 3: incredibly tight window to act. They have to get a
[14:11] Speaker 3: telescope designed, funded, built, launched and operating on the far
[14:16] Speaker 3: side of the Moon before that permanent RFI network.
[14:19] Speaker 2: Is established and for twenty thirty exactly if.
[14:22] Speaker 3: They miss the window, any telescope they send later will
[14:25] Speaker 3: run into the exact same interference problems as the telescope
[14:28] Speaker 3: sitting on the ground in Ohio or Australia.
[14:30] Speaker 2: Which brings us to the proposed solution. Yes, Knowing this
[14:33] Speaker 2: twenty thirty deadline is looming over their heads, a team
[14:36] Speaker 2: of scientists led by David Deboor at the University of
[14:39] Speaker 2: Oxford have put forward a deeply ambitious plan to beat
[14:43] Speaker 2: the clock.
[14:44] Speaker 3: It's very ambitious.
[14:45] Speaker 2: They laid this out recently, proposing a mission called the
[14:47] Speaker 2: Lunar Far Side Transience and Technology Telescope. Thankfully they shorten
[14:52] Speaker 2: that to LFT three.
[14:53] Speaker 3: Yes, LFT three is a fascinating piece of proposed engineering.
[14:57] Speaker 2: What does it look like.
[14:58] Speaker 3: Well, it's not a massive dish telescope like the ones
[15:01] Speaker 3: you see in movies. It's a specialized radio antenna array
[15:05] Speaker 3: designed to be deployed directly onto the linarratolith, just unrolled
[15:08] Speaker 3: onto the dirt basically, and it is specifically calibrated to
[15:11] Speaker 3: operate across the HF VHF and UHF frequency.
[15:16] Speaker 2: Bands high frequency, very high frequency, and ultra high frequency.
[15:20] Speaker 2: I know those terms from old television sets with the
[15:24] Speaker 2: two different dial Yeah. Exactly what exactly are those waves?
[15:28] Speaker 2: Physically speaking?
[15:29] Speaker 3: In the electromagnetic spectrum. These are radio waves with relatively
[15:33] Speaker 3: long wavelengths, ranging from about a meter to tens of
[15:37] Speaker 3: meters long.
[15:38] Speaker 2: Okay, so pretty big waves, very big.
[15:40] Speaker 3: Because the waves are so large, they're incredibly useful for
[15:43] Speaker 3: communication here on Earth. They can bend around obstacles and
[15:46] Speaker 3: travel great distances. That's why your FM radio, television broadcasts
[15:51] Speaker 3: and two A radios use VHF and UHF.
[15:53] Speaker 2: And because they are so useful, those exact bands are
[15:57] Speaker 2: completely cluttered and unusable for a strono me here on Earth.
[16:00] Speaker 3: Precisely, LFT three is designed to finally open up those
[16:04] Speaker 3: specific bands to deep space observation.
[16:06] Speaker 1: Wow.
[16:07] Speaker 3: The plan is to get this array deployed to the
[16:09] Speaker 3: far side by the end of the decade, slipping right
[16:11] Speaker 3: into that narrow window of silence, and then have it
[16:14] Speaker 3: sit completely still scanning the deep cosmos for about.
[16:18] Speaker 2: Twenty weeks twenty weeks to listen to a completely silent universe.
[16:21] Speaker 2: It sounds beautiful.
[16:22] Speaker 3: It really does.
[16:23] Speaker 2: But here's the detail that really made me stop and
[16:25] Speaker 2: reread the proposal. The estimated price tag for this entire mission,
[16:30] Speaker 2: soup to nuts, is budgeted at one hundred and fifty
[16:33] Speaker 2: million dollars miss, and they plan to pull this off
[16:36] Speaker 2: using NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, the CLPS program
[16:41] Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier. Now I have to ask a genuine
[16:43] Speaker 2: question here, because I feel like I'm missing something. Oh
[16:46] Speaker 2: to me or anyone listening. One hundred and fifty million
[16:49] Speaker 2: dollars is an unfathomable amount of money. Sure, but I
[16:53] Speaker 2: remember reading that the James web Space Telescope costs something
[16:56] Speaker 2: like ten billion dollars.
[16:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, nearly that much.
[17:00] Speaker 2: Even the Mars rovers cost billions. How on earth are
[17:03] Speaker 2: they planning to build a lunar observatory for one hundred
[17:05] Speaker 2: and fifty million. What are they sacrificing?
[17:08] Speaker 3: You're right to question that, because historically space astronomy is
[17:11] Speaker 3: a multi billion dollar game. When you look at flagship
[17:15] Speaker 3: missions like James Webb, you are paying for entirely bespoke
[17:19] Speaker 3: engineering right from the ground up exactly. You are paying
[17:23] Speaker 3: to design a spacecraft, build the intricate instruments from scratch
[17:26] Speaker 3: over twenty years and launch it on a dedicated heavy
[17:29] Speaker 3: lift rocket.
[17:30] Speaker 2: It's all custom.
[17:31] Speaker 3: It's all custom. So one hundred and fifty million dollars
[17:33] Speaker 3: for a lunar surface mission is exceptionally, almost aggressively lean.
[17:38] Speaker 2: So is it a bargain bin telescope? Are they cutting
[17:41] Speaker 2: corners on the science?
[17:42] Speaker 3: No, they aren't cutting corners on the science. They are
[17:44] Speaker 3: entirely changing the logistics model. How so, this is where
[17:48] Speaker 3: the CLPS program changes the paradigm. Instead of building their
[17:51] Speaker 3: own spacecraft to fly to the Moon, the LFT three
[17:54] Speaker 3: team is essentially proposing to buy a ticket on someone
[17:57] Speaker 3: else's ride.
[17:58] Speaker 2: Oh, the commercial.
[18:00] Speaker 3: Landers are already being built by private companies, right.
[18:02] Speaker 2: The cargo ships are already going.
[18:04] Speaker 3: Yes, LFT three just wants to be a passenger, a
[18:07] Speaker 3: payload tucked away in the cargo bay.
[18:09] Speaker 2: Oh. I see. It's the difference between buying a private
[18:12] Speaker 2: jet to fly across the country versus just buying a
[18:15] Speaker 2: first class ticket on a commercial flight that's already heading there.
[18:19] Speaker 3: That is the exact mechanism driving the cost down.
[18:22] Speaker 2: That's incredibly smart.
[18:23] Speaker 3: It is, and that low cost is absolutely vital to
[18:26] Speaker 3: the mission's.
[18:27] Speaker 2: Survival because of the deadline.
[18:28] Speaker 3: Exactly. If we connect this back to the twenty thirty deadline,
[18:32] Speaker 3: mission planners know they don't have twenty years to lobby
[18:36] Speaker 3: Congress or international space agencies for a ten billion dollar
[18:40] Speaker 3: flagship budget.
[18:41] Speaker 2: The bureaucracy alone would take them past the expiration date.
[18:44] Speaker 3: It would. They have to make this proposal so financially appealing,
[18:48] Speaker 3: so streamlined that a funding agency can green light it quickly.
[18:52] Speaker 2: So the lean budget is actually a survival tactic. Make
[18:55] Speaker 2: it cheap enough to get out the door before the
[18:57] Speaker 2: noise pollution starts.
[18:59] Speaker 3: Exactly.
[18:59] Speaker 2: That makes total sense. But logistics is one thing, physics
[19:03] Speaker 2: is another. Getting a budget friendly telescope to the Moon
[19:06] Speaker 2: is great, but building one that actually survives once it lands,
[19:09] Speaker 2: that's the tricky part. Yeah, I am struggling to understand
[19:12] Speaker 2: how a machine that cheap handles the lunar climate. Extreme
[19:16] Speaker 2: feels like too small a word.
[19:18] Speaker 3: Lunar surface is fundamentally hostile to delicate electronics.
[19:21] Speaker 2: I can't imagine.
[19:22] Speaker 3: Because the Moon has no atmosphere to distribute heat, the
[19:25] Speaker 3: temperature swings are violent.
[19:27] Speaker 2: Walk me through a typical day for this telescope, because
[19:30] Speaker 2: a lunar day isn't twenty four hours right right.
[19:33] Speaker 3: Because of the Moon's rotation, a single day of sunlight
[19:37] Speaker 3: lasts for about fourteen earth days.
[19:39] Speaker 2: Wow.
[19:40] Speaker 3: During that continuous two week bombardment of unfiltered solar radiation,
[19:45] Speaker 3: the surface temperature's skyrocket. They go up to one hundred
[19:48] Speaker 3: and twenty degrees celsius That is roughly two hundred and
[19:51] Speaker 3: forty eight degrees fair.
[19:52] Speaker 2: Enough, literally hotter than boiling water for two straight weeks.
[19:55] Speaker 3: Yes, and then the sun sets and what happens for
[19:58] Speaker 3: the next fourteen earth days? The telescope is plunged into
[20:01] Speaker 3: complete abyssle darkness without an atmosphere to trap any of
[20:06] Speaker 3: that heat. The temperature immediately plummets to what to minus
[20:09] Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty degrees celsius ere where minus two
[20:12] Speaker 3: hundred and two degrees fahrenheight.
[20:13] Speaker 2: The physical stress of that just blows my mind. You
[20:16] Speaker 2: have metal expanding in the boiling heat, then rapidly contracting
[20:19] Speaker 2: in the deep freeze. Yes, you have delicate microchips and
[20:22] Speaker 2: wiring that need to somehow not melt into slag or
[20:25] Speaker 2: snap like brittle twigs. How does any machine, let alone
[20:28] Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty million dollar one survive that cycle?
[20:31] Speaker 2: For twenty weeks.
[20:32] Speaker 3: Well, while those thermal extremes sound like an insurmountable nightmare,
[20:35] Speaker 3: this is actually an area where aerospace engineers have decades
[20:38] Speaker 3: of proven experience. Yeah, managing thermal expansion is a known science.
[20:43] Speaker 2: Okay.
[20:44] Speaker 3: The telescope will utilize specialized materials, things like multi layer
[20:48] Speaker 3: insulation blankets, those shiny gold foils you often see on.
[20:52] Speaker 2: Spacecraft, right, I've seen those on the Apollo missions.
[20:54] Speaker 3: Exactly. They also use aerogels, which are incredibly lightweight and
[20:59] Speaker 3: act as near per thermal insulators.
[21:01] Speaker 2: Oh cool.
[21:02] Speaker 3: And they design internal active heating systems powered by small
[21:05] Speaker 3: batteries or radioised topeters to keep the core electronics just
[21:09] Speaker 3: warm enough to survive the night.
[21:11] Speaker 2: So they essentially put the electronics in a high tech thermis.
[21:14] Speaker 3: Exactly. It's difficult engineering, certainly, and it requires meticulous testing,
[21:19] Speaker 3: but it is a solved problem in the grand scheme
[21:22] Speaker 3: of spaceflight. We know how to keep electronics alive in
[21:25] Speaker 3: extreme environments.
[21:26] Speaker 2: Okay, so the temperature won't kill it. But I was
[21:29] Speaker 2: reading ahead on this proposal and I head a wall
[21:31] Speaker 2: with the logistics of the data itself.
[21:33] Speaker 3: Ah.
[21:33] Speaker 2: Yes, And I really need you to clarify this for me.
[21:36] Speaker 2: We've established that the entire point of putting LFT three
[21:39] Speaker 2: on the far side of the Moon is that the
[21:40] Speaker 2: Moon's mass physically blocks all radio signals from Earth. It's
[21:44] Speaker 2: a total dead zone. Correct, So how does the telescope
[21:48] Speaker 2: phone home? Doesn't the very thing that makes this location
[21:52] Speaker 2: perfect for listening also make it completely useless for actually
[21:55] Speaker 2: getting the data back to the scientists.
[21:58] Speaker 3: You've just described the ultimate mid catch twenty two of
[22:01] Speaker 3: lunar radio astronomy. It is a brilliant observation. You're absolutely correct.
[22:06] Speaker 3: There is zero direct line of sight from LFT three
[22:10] Speaker 3: to Earth. If it transmits a signal, it just hits
[22:13] Speaker 3: the dirt.
[22:14] Speaker 2: So they're building a telescope in a permanent blind spot.
[22:17] Speaker 2: How do we get the recordings? Do they have to
[22:18] Speaker 2: send an astronaut to pick up a hard drive?
[22:21] Speaker 3: Thankfully?
[22:21] Speaker 2: No? Okay, good.
[22:22] Speaker 3: The solution relies on a very sparse network of lunar
[22:26] Speaker 3: orbiting satellites. Think of them as high altitude relay stations.
[22:30] Speaker 3: As these satellites orbit the Moon, they eventually pass over
[22:33] Speaker 3: the far side for a brief window they have a
[22:35] Speaker 3: line of sight to the LFT three telescope down on
[22:38] Speaker 3: the surface. AA the telescope beams its data up to
[22:41] Speaker 3: the satellite, satellite holds onto it continues its orbit, and
[22:44] Speaker 3: once it comes back round to the near side of
[22:46] Speaker 3: the Moon and sees Earth again, it beams the data
[22:49] Speaker 3: down to our deep space network.
[22:50] Speaker 2: Okay, a relay system, that makes sense. But these relay satellites,
[22:55] Speaker 2: they aren't exactly a high speed fiber optic cables, are
[22:58] Speaker 2: they No.
[23:00] Speaker 3: They are severely limited. And this brings us to the
[23:02] Speaker 3: true engineering nightmare of the mission, the data bottleneck.
[23:07] Speaker 2: I saw the numbers on this, and I genuinely laughed
[23:09] Speaker 2: out loud. The current lunar relay infrastructure puts a hard
[23:12] Speaker 2: cap on data transfer at about one hundred gigabytes a month. Yes,
[23:16] Speaker 2: ondred gigable, one hundred gigabytes. I have a teenager, and
[23:19] Speaker 2: I know for a fact they burn through one hundred
[23:21] Speaker 2: gigabytes of data on their cell phone plan in two
[23:23] Speaker 2: weeks just watching videos and scrolling social media. It's true,
[23:26] Speaker 2: and we are trying to use that exact same data
[23:29] Speaker 2: cap to transmit incredibly complex, high resolution scientific data about
[23:34] Speaker 2: the entire cosmos.
[23:35] Speaker 3: It is an agonizing limitation. To put it in perspective,
[23:38] Speaker 3: A modern radio telescope array on Earth can generate terabytes
[23:41] Speaker 3: of raw data in a single afternoon.
[23:43] Speaker 2: Terabytes in an afternoon.
[23:45] Speaker 3: Yes, if LFT three just sat there recorded every single static, kiss, pop,
[23:49] Speaker 3: and radio wave it heard and try to send that
[23:51] Speaker 3: raw data back through that relay satellite, it would take
[23:54] Speaker 3: years to transmit just a few days worth of observations.
[23:57] Speaker 2: So they literally cannot send everything here. The pipe is
[24:00] Speaker 2: just too small.
[24:01] Speaker 3: The pipe is microscopic compared to the ocean of data
[24:05] Speaker 3: they're collecting, which means the telescope cannot just be a
[24:08] Speaker 3: passive recording device. It has to act as its own editor.
[24:12] Speaker 3: It has to make decisions.
[24:14] Speaker 2: Here's where it gets really interesting, because they can't send
[24:17] Speaker 2: the raw footage. The telescope has to process the data
[24:21] Speaker 2: on site. I was trying to visualize this, and it's
[24:24] Speaker 2: like having an onboard AI acting as a very strict
[24:28] Speaker 2: wildlife photographer. How do you mean, Well, if a photographer
[24:31] Speaker 2: sets up a remote camera in the jungle, they don't
[24:34] Speaker 2: want a million blurry photos of leaves blowing in the wind.
[24:38] Speaker 2: They program the camera to only save the photo if
[24:41] Speaker 2: it detects the specific geometric shape of a snow leopard.
[24:44] Speaker 3: That is an excellent way to conceptualize it. The LFT
[24:47] Speaker 3: three emission planners intend to implement aggressive preliminary processing and
[24:51] Speaker 3: filtering right there the telescope itself. The machine will analyze
[24:55] Speaker 3: the incoming radio waves in real time, separate the useless
[25:00] Speaker 3: cosmic static from potentially anomalous signals, discard the junk, and
[25:04] Speaker 3: only save the highly relevant VIP data to send back
[25:08] Speaker 3: through that tiny one hundred gigabyte a month connection.
[25:11] Speaker 2: But doing heavy data processing requires serious computer power. We
[25:16] Speaker 2: are talking about running complex algorithms on the surface of
[25:19] Speaker 2: the Moon, we are, And earlier you said the Moon
[25:22] Speaker 2: has no atmosphere, which means there is no protection from
[25:25] Speaker 2: space radiation.
[25:26] Speaker 3: This is where standard computer engineering completely fails. H If
[25:31] Speaker 3: you take a high end commercial processor, the kind running
[25:33] Speaker 3: your laptop and put it on the Moon, it will
[25:36] Speaker 3: crash almost immediately. Why because the universe is flooded with
[25:39] Speaker 3: high energy cosmic rays, which are essentially atomic fragments blasted
[25:43] Speaker 3: out by supernova across the galaxy.
[25:45] Speaker 2: And these atomic kragments are just raining down on the
[25:48] Speaker 2: Moon constantly.
[25:49] Speaker 3: Constantly, and they are moving at a significant fraction of
[25:52] Speaker 3: the speed of light. When one of these cosmic rays
[25:54] Speaker 3: strikes the standard silicon microchip, it deposits a tiny electrical charge.
[26:00] Speaker 3: It hits exactly the right microscopic transistor. That rogue electrical
[26:04] Speaker 3: charge can flip a bit of data from a zero
[26:06] Speaker 3: to a one, or a one to a zero.
[26:08] Speaker 2: Imagine you're transcribing a massive complex mathematical equation by hand,
[26:14] Speaker 2: and a sniper shoots out a specific number on the
[26:16] Speaker 2: page and replaces it with a different one. The entire
[26:20] Speaker 2: calculation is suddenly ruined.
[26:21] Speaker 3: In computer science, we call that a single event upset.
[26:24] Speaker 2: A single event upset.
[26:25] Speaker 3: It corrupts data, freezes software, and can cause catastrophic system failures.
[26:31] Speaker 3: To survive this, LFT three must use heavily radiation hardened
[26:35] Speaker 3: computational equipment.
[26:36] Speaker 2: How do you harden a computer against a microscopic sniper
[26:39] Speaker 2: bullet moving near the speed of light?
[26:41] Speaker 3: It involves physical and logical defenses.
[26:43] Speaker 2: Tell me about the physical ones first.
[26:45] Speaker 3: Physically, manufacturers might build the chips on insulating substrates like
[26:49] Speaker 3: sapphire instead of standard silicon safhire. Really, yeah, it prevents
[26:53] Speaker 3: that rogue electrical charge from spreading through the chip.
[26:55] Speaker 2: Okay, that's physical, What about logical?
[26:57] Speaker 3: Logically, they use a concept called trip modular redundancy.
[27:01] Speaker 2: What does that mean? In practice?
[27:03] Speaker 3: It means that instead of one circuit doing the math,
[27:06] Speaker 3: you have three identical circuits perform the exact same calculation simultaneously.
[27:10] Speaker 2: Okay.
[27:11] Speaker 3: At the end of the calculation, a voting system compares
[27:14] Speaker 3: the three answers.
[27:15] Speaker 2: A voting system, Yes.
[27:17] Speaker 3: If a cosmic ray hits one circuit and flips a bit,
[27:20] Speaker 3: its answer will be different from the other two A.
[27:23] Speaker 3: The system recognizes the anomaly, outvotes the corrupted circuit, and
[27:27] Speaker 3: proceeds with the correct data.
[27:29] Speaker 2: That is incredibly clever. It's an onboard democracy to ensure
[27:33] Speaker 2: the data is accurate.
[27:34] Speaker 3: It is brilliant, but is also bulky, power hungry, and
[27:37] Speaker 3: very expensive to design.
[27:39] Speaker 2: I can imagine.
[27:40] Speaker 3: Yet it is an absolute requirement if this telescope is
[27:43] Speaker 3: going to successfully triage the universe in real time and
[27:46] Speaker 3: squeeze the most vital discoveries through that narrow data bottleneck.
[27:49] Speaker 2: Okay, let's fast forward. Let's assume humanity pulls this off.
[27:53] Speaker 2: We get the funding, we launch before the twenty thirty deadline.
[27:57] Speaker 2: The telescope survives the boiling days and the freezing night,
[28:00] Speaker 2: and this incredible radiation hardened AI brain successfully filters the
[28:05] Speaker 2: data and beams it back to Earth.
[28:07] Speaker 3: A lot of ifs, But Okay.
[28:09] Speaker 2: What exactly are we hoping this machine is going to hear?
[28:13] Speaker 2: What is the ultimate scientific payoff for twenty weeks of
[28:17] Speaker 2: listening in the dark.
[28:18] Speaker 3: The scientific goals of LFT three are profound, and they
[28:22] Speaker 3: are generally divided into three primary targets.
[28:25] Speaker 2: Okay, what's the first part?
[28:26] Speaker 3: The first one is undeniably the most provocative, the search
[28:30] Speaker 3: for techno signatures.
[28:31] Speaker 2: Techno signatures, which is the academic way of saying we
[28:33] Speaker 2: are hunting for aliens.
[28:35] Speaker 3: We are looking for evidence of intelligent technological activity. Okay,
[28:38] Speaker 3: this specific objective is heavily supported by the Breakthrough Listen Initiative.
[28:42] Speaker 3: What's that It's the largest ever scientific research program aimed
[28:45] Speaker 3: at finding evidence of civilizations beyond Earth.
[28:48] Speaker 2: So we are basically trying to find the next Wow
[28:51] Speaker 2: signal essentially, Yes, But here is why this is so
[28:54] Speaker 2: different than nineteen seventy seven. If Jerry Emon had found
[28:57] Speaker 2: the Wow signal on the far side of the Moon,
[29:00] Speaker 2: there wouldn't have been decades of debate about.
[29:02] Speaker 3: It, right, There wouldn't have been one of the great
[29:04] Speaker 3: frustrations of the Wow signal and every other strange blip
[29:08] Speaker 3: we've heard since is the lingering ambiguity.
[29:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, you never really know exactly.
[29:13] Speaker 3: When you were listening from Earth. You always have to
[29:16] Speaker 3: wonder was that weird signal actually from a distant star
[29:20] Speaker 3: system or was it a classified military aircraft flying overhead?
[29:25] Speaker 3: Was it a glitch in a satellite?
[29:26] Speaker 2: I remember reading a hilarious story about the Park's observatory
[29:30] Speaker 2: in Australia. For years they were picking up these mysterious,
[29:33] Speaker 2: incredibly powerful signals they called periton's.
[29:36] Speaker 3: Oh yes, the peryitons.
[29:37] Speaker 2: They thought it was some unknown cosmic phenomenon, and it
[29:40] Speaker 2: turned out to be the microwave oven in the staff kitchen.
[29:44] Speaker 2: Every time an astronomer got impatient and popped the microwave
[29:46] Speaker 2: door open before the timer went off, it emitted a
[29:48] Speaker 2: brief radio burst that the telescope picked up.
[29:51] Speaker 3: It's a classic cautionary tale in astronomy. It perfectly illustrates
[29:55] Speaker 3: the problem.
[29:55] Speaker 2: It really does.
[29:56] Speaker 3: The radio quiet environment of the lunar far side entire
[30:00] Speaker 3: removes that ambiguity. If LFT three detects a highly structured,
[30:04] Speaker 3: unnatural radio pulse, we know with absolute certainty that it
[30:09] Speaker 3: didn't come from a microwave or a radar station or
[30:12] Speaker 3: a cell phone, because none of that is there exactly.
[30:14] Speaker 3: It came from deep space. That pristine silence allows astronomers
[30:19] Speaker 3: to set their detection thresholds much much.
[30:22] Speaker 2: Lower, so they can hear quieter things.
[30:24] Speaker 3: They can listen for fainter whispers without being overwhelmed by
[30:27] Speaker 3: false positives.
[30:28] Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? Alien civilizations are target
[30:32] Speaker 2: number one? That is massive on its own it is,
[30:34] Speaker 2: but what if there is no one broadcasting? What if
[30:36] Speaker 2: the universe is quiet? It leads me to wonder, before
[30:39] Speaker 2: we look for aliens, shouldn't we just be looking for
[30:42] Speaker 2: planets that could even support them in the first place.
[30:44] Speaker 2: Does a radio telescope help us find habitable worlds?
[30:48] Speaker 3: It absolutely does, and that leads directly to the second
[30:50] Speaker 3: scientific goal of emission, which is LFT three is designed
[30:53] Speaker 3: to detect auroras around exoplanets.
[30:56] Speaker 2: Auroras like the Northern Lights, but on planets or in
[31:00] Speaker 2: completely different stars hundreds of light years away.
[31:03] Speaker 3: Exactly how does.
[31:04] Speaker 2: Seeing a light show tell us if a planet is habitable?
[31:07] Speaker 3: To understand the connection, we have to look at the
[31:09] Speaker 3: invisible architecture of a planet, specifically, it's magnetic field.
[31:14] Speaker 2: Okay, the magnetic field.
[31:16] Speaker 3: When a planet has a molten rotating iron core, like
[31:19] Speaker 3: Earth does, it generates a massive, invisible magnetic shield around
[31:25] Speaker 3: the entire globe. This is known as a dynamo effect.
[31:28] Speaker 2: And why is that shield so important for life?
[31:31] Speaker 3: Because stars are violent.
[31:32] Speaker 2: They are giant nuclear reactors.
[31:34] Speaker 3: Basically, yes, our Sun and every other star constantly blasts
[31:39] Speaker 3: out a stellar wind, a hurricane of highly energetic charged particles. Okay,
[31:43] Speaker 3: if a planet does not have a magnetic field, those
[31:46] Speaker 3: stellar winds will slam directly into its atmosphere and literally
[31:49] Speaker 3: strip it away into space over millions of years.
[31:52] Speaker 2: Oh wow, is that what happened to Mars is.
[31:54] Speaker 3: The leading theory for why Mars is a barren desert today. Really,
[31:57] Speaker 3: it likely had a thick atmosphere and liquid water billions
[32:00] Speaker 3: of years ago, but its internal dynamo cooled and.
[32:03] Speaker 2: Died and the shield went down.
[32:05] Speaker 3: Without a magnetic field to protect it, the solar wind
[32:07] Speaker 3: eroded its atmosphere away.
[32:09] Speaker 2: That's terrifying.
[32:10] Speaker 3: So if you want a planet to harbor life as
[32:12] Speaker 3: we know it, a strong magnetic field is a fundamental,
[32:17] Speaker 3: non negotiable prerequisite.
[32:19] Speaker 2: Okay, I follow the logic. Life needs an atmosphere, an
[32:22] Speaker 2: atmosphere needs a magnetic shield. But magnetic fields are invisible.
[32:28] Speaker 2: How does a radio telescope see.
[32:29] Speaker 3: Them through the auroras?
[32:31] Speaker 2: Ah.
[32:32] Speaker 3: When those charged particles from the stellar wind hit a
[32:34] Speaker 3: magnetic field, the field funnels them down toward the magnetic
[32:38] Speaker 3: poles of the planet.
[32:39] Speaker 2: Like the North and South pole.
[32:41] Speaker 3: Right. As those particles crash into the upper atmosphere, they
[32:44] Speaker 3: release energy. We see that energy visually as the beautiful
[32:48] Speaker 3: dancing lights of the.
[32:49] Speaker 2: Auroras right, the northern lights.
[32:51] Speaker 3: But visual light isn't the only thing being generated.
[32:53] Speaker 2: They generate radio waves.
[32:54] Speaker 3: They generate very specific, powerful low frequency radio waves through
[32:59] Speaker 3: a process called the electron cyclotron maser instability.
[33:02] Speaker 2: Wow, that's a mouthful, it is.
[33:04] Speaker 3: But essentially, as the electrons spiral down the magnetic field lines,
[33:08] Speaker 3: they emit a natural radio broadcast.
[33:10] Speaker 2: Oh and because the Earth's ionosphere, that plasma mirror we
[33:14] Speaker 2: talked about earlier, blocks low frequency radio signals from reaching
[33:17] Speaker 2: the ground, we can't easily hear these exoplanet auroras from
[33:21] Speaker 2: here on Earth exactly.
[33:23] Speaker 3: We are blind to them. But LFT three, sitting outside
[33:27] Speaker 3: the ionosphere, is perfectly positioned to tune in to those
[33:31] Speaker 3: specific frequencies.
[33:32] Speaker 2: That's amazing.
[33:33] Speaker 3: If you detect that unique radio emission coming from a
[33:36] Speaker 3: distant star system, you have indirectly proven that an exoplanet
[33:40] Speaker 3: there possesses a strong magnetic field.
[33:43] Speaker 2: That is profound.
[33:44] Speaker 3: It really is.
[33:45] Speaker 2: We aren't just looking for intelligent life transmitting intentional signals.
[33:48] Speaker 2: We are literally standing the cosmos for worlds that possess
[33:51] Speaker 2: the physical architecture required to protect biological life. Guess the
[33:55] Speaker 2: radio emission from an exoplanet's aurora is basically a planetary beacon.
[33:59] Speaker 2: Saying I have a shield I am capable of holding
[34:02] Speaker 2: onto an ocean.
[34:03] Speaker 3: It shifts the search for habitability into a completely new dimension.
[34:06] Speaker 2: Incredible.
[34:07] Speaker 3: Now there's a third major scientific goal for the mission,
[34:10] Speaker 3: and it focuses on some of the most violent events
[34:13] Speaker 3: in the universe, transient and explosive astronomical phenomena like what
[34:18] Speaker 3: primarily fast radio bursts or FRBs.
[34:22] Speaker 2: Fast radio bursts. I've heard the term, but the mechanics
[34:25] Speaker 2: of them sound completely terrifying. These are incredibly energetic flashes
[34:29] Speaker 2: of radio waves that just pop off randomly in the sky.
[34:32] Speaker 3: Right there are arguably the most extreme transient events we
[34:35] Speaker 3: have ever observed. Really, a FRB lasts for mere milliseconds,
[34:40] Speaker 3: a tiny fraction of a second. Okay, but in that
[34:43] Speaker 3: blink of an eye, the source of the burst releases
[34:45] Speaker 3: as much energy as our entire sun emits in an
[34:48] Speaker 3: entire year.
[34:49] Speaker 2: Wait what that amount of energy is almost incomprehensible. What
[34:54] Speaker 2: could possibly generate that kind of power?
[34:57] Speaker 3: That is the mystery we still do not fully understand
[35:00] Speaker 3: and their exact.
[35:00] Speaker 2: Origins, But there are theories.
[35:02] Speaker 3: Yes, the leading candidates are highly exotic objects, specifically magnetars.
[35:06] Speaker 2: What is a magnetar?
[35:07] Speaker 3: When a massive star dies in a supernova explosion, its
[35:10] Speaker 3: core collapses under its own gravity, creating a neutron star. Okay,
[35:15] Speaker 3: a neutron star is an object so incredibly dense that
[35:18] Speaker 3: a single piece burn of its material would weigh billions
[35:21] Speaker 3: of tons. A magnetar is a specific type of neutron
[35:25] Speaker 3: star that possesses a magnetic field trillions of times stronger
[35:29] Speaker 3: than Earth's trillions trillions. We are talking about magnetic fields
[35:33] Speaker 3: so intense they would wipe every credit card and destroy
[35:36] Speaker 3: every hard drive on Earth if one were located halfway
[35:39] Speaker 3: across the Solar System.
[35:40] Speaker 2: So a city sized, ultra dense ball of matter with
[35:44] Speaker 2: a terrifying magnetic.
[35:45] Speaker 3: Field yes, and scientists theorize that when the crust of
[35:48] Speaker 3: a magnetar fractures, essentially a star quest a starquake, it
[35:52] Speaker 3: releases these blinding flashes of radio energy.
[35:55] Speaker 2: But solving the mystery of frb's requires extreme observational clarity.
[36:00] Speaker 3: Exactly because they are so fast. Trying to catch one
[36:03] Speaker 3: from Earth is like trying to distinguish a firefly from
[36:06] Speaker 3: a sparkler at that heavy metal concert.
[36:08] Speaker 2: It's impossible.
[36:09] Speaker 3: It is incredible, right. The absolute clarity offered by the
[36:12] Speaker 3: radio quiet environment of the lunar far side would allow
[36:16] Speaker 3: us to observe these bursts with unprecedented precision.
[36:19] Speaker 2: We can actually see what they are.
[36:21] Speaker 3: We can analyze the exact structure of the wave, helping
[36:23] Speaker 3: us finally pin down the physical mechanisms causing these massive
[36:27] Speaker 3: cosmic explosions.
[36:28] Speaker 2: So let's look at the big picture here. Okay, we
[36:30] Speaker 2: are hunting for habitable, shielded worlds. We are trying to
[36:34] Speaker 2: dissect the most explosive, violent cosmic mysteries in the universe,
[36:39] Speaker 2: and we are keeping a perfectly quiet ear out for
[36:42] Speaker 2: the technological whispers of entirely other civilizations.
[36:45] Speaker 3: That's the plan.
[36:46] Speaker 2: It is a massive universe altering payload of science, all
[36:50] Speaker 2: packed into one hundred and fifty million dollar bargain telescope
[36:53] Speaker 2: hitching a ride on a commercial lander.
[36:55] Speaker 3: It really is a marvel of modern mission planning.
[36:58] Speaker 2: But as we establish it, all hinges on that very
[37:00] Speaker 2: real ticking clock.
[37:01] Speaker 3: The twenty thirty deadline is looming, and this brings us
[37:04] Speaker 3: back to the current rather sobering reality of the LFT
[37:08] Speaker 3: three mission proposal.
[37:09] Speaker 2: Right because despite the high stakes, and despite how incredibly
[37:13] Speaker 2: appealing that one hundred and fifty million dollar price tag
[37:16] Speaker 2: is compared to traditional space science, as of right now,
[37:20] Speaker 2: LFT three has zero funding.
[37:23] Speaker 3: It remains entirely theoretical at this stage.
[37:25] Speaker 2: That's wild to me.
[37:26] Speaker 3: It is a fully designed, highly logical, relatively inexpensive proposal
[37:31] Speaker 3: that is currently sitting on a desk while the lunar
[37:33] Speaker 3: infrastructure clock ticks down.
[37:35] Speaker 2: It truly is an agonizing race against time for radio astronomers.
[37:38] Speaker 2: It's a question of whether this mission will ever see
[37:41] Speaker 2: the light of the extremely long lunar day before the
[37:43] Speaker 2: window closes forever.
[37:45] Speaker 3: I think the situation with LFT three highlights a much broader,
[37:48] Speaker 3: almost philosophical truth about our relationship with space. What do
[37:51] Speaker 3: you mean it shows us how fragile quiet really is.
[37:55] Speaker 3: We are so accustomed to thinking of space as this infinite, silent,
[37:58] Speaker 3: unchanging void, but our technological footprint is expanding exponentially. We
[38:04] Speaker 3: are literally on the precipice of permanently altering the environment
[38:07] Speaker 3: of our nearest.
[38:08] Speaker 2: Neighbor, and in doing so, we might fundamentally close a
[38:11] Speaker 2: window on our ability to understand the broader universe from
[38:15] Speaker 2: our own backyard. Silence isn't just an absence of noise anymore.
[38:19] Speaker 2: It is a rapidly shrinking natural resource.
[38:22] Speaker 3: It really is.
[38:23] Speaker 2: The radio quiet of the lunar far side is a
[38:25] Speaker 2: pristine electromagnetic ecosystem that has existed for billions of years,
[38:31] Speaker 2: and we are preparing to fill it with the static
[38:33] Speaker 2: of our own progress in less than a decade.
[38:35] Speaker 3: It forces us to confront the consequences of becoming a
[38:38] Speaker 3: truly spacefaring species. The noise follows us wherever we go.
[38:43] Speaker 2: It makes you wonder about the bigger picture, especially when
[38:46] Speaker 2: we talk about the search for alien life.
[38:48] Speaker 3: Oh definitely, We've.
[38:49] Speaker 2: Always wondered why the universe seems so quiet, why we
[38:52] Speaker 2: haven't heard from anyone else out there. But maybe the
[38:54] Speaker 2: great silence of the universe isn't because it's empty. Maybe
[38:57] Speaker 2: it's just a phase.
[38:59] Speaker 3: That's a profound thought.
[39:00] Speaker 2: If every technological civilization inevitably invents radio, launches satellites, and
[39:05] Speaker 2: drowns out their own skies with noise just a few
[39:07] Speaker 2: decades into their development, maybe they all go deaf to
[39:10] Speaker 2: the cosmos, just like we are right now.
[39:12] Speaker 3: The universe might be full of life, but everyone is
[39:15] Speaker 3: just temporarily deafened by their own progress exactly.
[39:19] Speaker 2: The only ones who can truly hear the universe are
[39:22] Speaker 2: the civilizations that manage to survive long enough and act
[39:26] Speaker 2: fast enough to build ears on the silent, dark sides
[39:29] Speaker 2: of their own moons before the noise catches up to
[39:32] Speaker 2: them
[39:32] Speaker 3: Before the heavy metal concert takes over intirely before the
[39:35] Speaker 3: noise catches up to them,

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