• chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    23 days ago

    You mean stick the Hubble on the dark side of the moon? That’s a little difficult.

    The small satellites swarming everywhere can’t be stuck out of the way. They’re communications satellites. They need to be close by to reduce latency.

    • tal@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      23 days ago

      You mean stick the Hubble on the dark side of the moon?

      Space telescopes in general. Somewhere that isn’t LEO; I grabbed that as an example because I recall it being needed for…IIRC it was radiotelescopes, to avoid communications chatter. Might not be ideal for optical telescopes.

      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        23 days ago

        The two biggest problems with observatories on the far side of the moon are being limited to only half of space (the same as planetary observatories) and the cost to build it. You can mitigate the first by having observatories on opposite edges of the far side, but that also costs twice as much as building one.

          • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            23 days ago

            And yet, I can use satellites to communicate on the other side of the world. I have a suspicion the same system would work for this.

              • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                8 days ago

                So the only problem is money. This isn’t an engineering issue, we’ve done this thousands of times. Unlike almost every other aspect of building a radio or optical observatory on the moon.