Could We Hunt For Gravitational Waves From The Moon?

Such an observatory could unlock the cosmos’ secrets

- Mike Wall

NASA is working to establish a permanent human presence on and around the Moon by the end of the 2020s via a program known as Artemis. That presence may eventually include radio telescopes on the Moon’s exceptionally quiet far side, and perhaps even more ambitious off-Earth science facilities.

A recent study makes the case for building a gravitational-wave observatory on the Moon. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time created by massive objects. They were predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1915, and first directly detected a century later by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) consortium.