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///@james.webb.telescope.official: A Telescope on the Far side of the Moon Could Illuminate the Dark Ages of the Universe.Cosmos was dark for its first hundreds of millions of years before light shone from the first stars and galaxies. “The early universe had no galaxies, just hot stuff. As things cooled off, something had to happen before the galaxies formed,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Honestly, we’ve got lots of stories and predictions, but no measurements. Unravelling this mystery is one of the great objectives of modern-day astronomy” To solve it, scientists have identified an unlikely location for their work, one that could help shape the next generation of astronomical research: the far side of the moon. Before the first stars, the universe didn’t emit visible light, but the primordial matter that pervaded the universe likely did emit radio signals. Astronomers have never seen these wavelengths because they’re so stretched out that they can’t be detected over the radio chatter bouncing around Earth. The far side of the moon surface always faces away from Earth, so if astronomers could build a radio telescope there, they’d have a natural noise barrier. NASA-funded a project called FARSIDE. The entire radio telescope would pack into a robotic lunar lander that would touch down on the far side of the moon. Then, four small rovers would slowly uncoil nearly 30 miles of wire and 128 antennas into a spiral pattern covering some 6 miles. Meanwhile, NASA had funded a project called DAPPER. This small satellite will be deployed from a spacecraft “bus,” which the agency plans to launch as soon as 2022. And instead of sitting on the moon’s surface, it will make initial observations of the dark ages and cosmic dawn during the brief part of its orbit where it’s behind the moon.