Here’s looking at you: Moon-based telescope will allow users to see what Earth looks like from space

Ever wonder what the Earth looks like from the moon? Well, in two years, you’ll be able to see it for yourself, thanks to some creative minds with very deep pockets. 

(Image via: earthobservatory.nasa.gov)

A privately funded telescope designed and built by Silicon Valley-based Moon Express, Inc., will be sent to the moon in 2015 to allow the public to go online and view the Earth from afar.

“It's citizen science on the moon and it's really a new model of public participation,” Moon Express CEO Bob Richards told The Canadian Press on Tuesday. “This will be a small, but very high-performance telescope on the moon that the public and scientists or professionals and amateurs alike will have access to over the internet.”

Beyond merely having access to some lunar-based footage, users will also be able to maneuver the device by remote control.

“Depending on where you are on the Earth you may be seeing the moon up in the sky, taking a picture of you, which would be kind of a heady thing to think of,” said Steve Durst, an American businessman and educator who also leads the Hawaii-based International Lunar Observatory Association in his spare time. “The other thing that you'll be able to do is turn the telescope down to the lunar landscape and take pictures of the landscape that's around the [Moon Express] lander.”

The shoebox-sized telescope has already proven quite capable: it was tested out in December 2011 from the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii and proved quite fully capable.

“We put it on top of the Mauna Kea, pretended it was on the moon and had scientists and individuals access it through internet software that we developed,” he said.

The one thing Moon Express is competing against right now is time: You see, they’re actually trying to secure the Google Lunar X Prize, a contest which offers $20 million to the first privately funded team that lands a robot on the moon.

The runner-up gets $5 million.

“We want to win the Google Lunar X prize so that is somewhat driving our schedule,” Richards said. “So I would say sometime in mid-to-late 2015 is when we'd be looking at.”

Story via: cbc.ca