SETI's plan for a sky-monitoring telescope on the moon

The SETI Institute teamed up with Louisiana State University and Mississippi State University to help students design the science program for AstronetX PBC's first lunar-based camera.

The scientific program planning is funded by a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant to AstronetX. Additional funding for student participation is provided by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergrads program at LSU. L-CAM1 will capture images for research in astrophysics, planetary science and planetary defense.

In addition to Marchis, Dr. Tabetha Boyjian leads the science team with Dr. Matthew Penny and Dr. Angelle Tanner.

"To develop the best plan, our student team first needed to create simulations of the portion of lunar sky L-CAM1 will see during the mission's multiple lunar days as a way of determining visible astrophysical and astronomical targets. One of the unique benefits L-CAM1 will provide is the duration of uninterrupted time individual subjects can be observed," said Marchis.

"Giving early-career students the chance to design a frontier, space-based science program that will operate on the lunar surface is a wonderful and unique opportunity to support the progression of tomorrow's leading astronomers and astrophysicists," said Boyajian, LSU Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

Student Experience: "Some of the specific data analysis was classifying targets by type and observability, including opportunities to continuously observe the light curves of near-Earth asteroids so we can characterize them in new ways," said Peter Santana, L-CAM1 Student Science Team member who worked at the SETI Institute as part of their REU program.

"Working on L-CAM has been a dream come true for me. I've been an astronomer since I was 13, and now I'm developing the science program for a lunar surface telescope," said Farzaneh Zohrabi, L-CAM1 student science team member studying at LSU. "A unique thing that we're planning to do with L-CAM makes precise measurements of nearby bright stars and their exoplanets. This is something that cannot easily be done using ground-based telescopes on Earth because of the atmosphere and saturation limits."

"Because of my data science background, the initial challenge presented to me was to think about how we can map all the known exoplanets and their hosts in order to identify what will be observable from L-CAM1's landing site," said Carol Miu, L-CAM1 student science team member studying at Collin College.

After selecting initial science targets, the team considered alternate mission schedule and landing locations for L-CAM1, requiring additional analysis to modify the list of targets.

A system designed to provide data from the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array for analysis in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has successfully acquired data from a VLA antenna.