From Reuters Science News: BOULDER, Colo. (Reuters) - As the United States races to put humans back on the moon for the first time in 50 years, a NASA-funded lab in Colorado aims to send robots there to deploy telescopes that will look far into our galaxy, remotely operated by orbiting astronauts.
The radio telescopes, to be planted on the far side of the moon, are among a plethora of projects underway by the U.S. space agency, private companies and other nations that will transform the moonscape in the coming decade.
鈥淭his is not your grandfather鈥檚 Apollo program that we鈥檙e looking at,鈥� said Jack Burns, director of the Network for Exploration and Space Science at the University of Colorado, which is working on the telescope project.
鈥淭his is really a very different kind of program and very importantly it鈥檚 going to involve machines and humans working together,鈥� Burns said in an interview at his lab on the Boulder campus.