Looking for aliens from the far side of the moon [COMIC]

Text on the image: Finding distant planets is hard enough, but looking for life is even trickier. Not only are the color of plants or light from cities difficult to see from Earth, but our own light and radio pollution can drown out dim signals from space. Image: A three-eyed alien perched on the moon yells “quiet down!” at an Earth-based city.
Text on the image: Even space telescopes catch that noise. But there’s one guaranteed quiet spot: the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth. In other words, the moon itself is a shield from all our noise. Image: Wavy lines representing signals from Earth bend around the moon. The panel gives the comic’s title: Looking for Aliens from the Far Side of the Moon, by Matthew R. Francis and Maki Naro.
Text on the image: Telescopes planned for the far side of the moon would be sensitive to the extremely long wavelengths of radio waves. If a far-off planet has a magnetic field similar to Earth’s, then it will hum with these radio waves. Earth’s magnetic field shields us from deadly radiation from the sun, helping make life possible. So such a field could be sign that a planet harbors life. Image: Curvy blue lines of a magnetic field surround a red dot, representing Earth.
Text on the image: Catching big wavelengths requires very big telescopes, and they probably won’t look like any telescope you’ve ever seen. “For this kind of science, it's just metal sticks arranged in different ways,” says Nivedita Mahesh. (Astronomer, California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.) “50 to 100 meters long!” Image: A brown-haired scientist wearing a lavender sari describes a telescope. To the bottom left, a miniature of her stands between two long sticks arranged in a V-shape (“50 to 100 meters long!”) Above her are arranged three telescopes — a big, Earth-based telescope, a smaller telescope that an individual might own, and the James Webb Space Telescope — are each outlined in a red circle with a slash drawn across.
Text on the image: Take the planned telescope FARSIDE. FARSIDE stands for Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets. FARSIDE’s 128 antennas, made of pairs of metal sticks, will be arranged like a 10-kilometer-wide (6.2-mile-wide) four-petal flower. Image: In the upper right is a yellow circle with a rover that would deploy the FARSIDE array. In the middle is a four-leaf clover shape with a red dot in the middle that represents what the array would look like. To the left is an orange three-eyed alien saying “Neat!” And below that is a circle with an antenna node — a square with two lines running out from either side.
Text on the image: Human astronauts wouldn’t build this telescope. Instead, each pair of sticks would be attached to its neighbors using a tether, which would be wound up on a spool. A small robotic rover would unwind the tether and roll the antennas out onto the moon’s surface, attaching each pair of sticks to the ground as it goes. Image: A rover with black wheels sits on the moon’s surface. Behind it stands an astronaut in a space suit carrying a shovel, looking at the rover.
Text on the image: FARSIDE would also study the structure of the universe before the first stars formed over 13 billion years ago. Scientists call this the “cosmic dark ages”. Mahesh: “The only way of doing that is to look for a signal from hydrogen [gas], and the only way we can get that signal to go to the far side of the moon.” Image: A brown-haired scientist wearing a lavender sari stands outside in the dark, with tiny stars in the background. She lights up her face from the underside with a flashlight.
Text on the image: Scientists still need to solve some problems before FARSIDE can be built. The detectors need to be kept cold, for instance, and the moon’s surface can reach 120º Celsius (250º Fahrenheit) during the day. And the moon’s soil could affect the antennas in unknown ways. Prototype experiments sent to the moon will probably test those within the next year. Image: An astronaut standing on the moon’s surface holds an umbrella over a telescope part that looks with a square box with lines coming out of each side.
Text on the image: FARSIDE is only one possible option. NASA is considering using a crater on the Moon’s far side like a giant satellite dish. And the European Space Agency is looking at a design for a big telescope printed on an inflatable pad that can be unrolled like a blanket. Image: The top half of the panel depicts a telescope built in a moon crater. Below is a picture of a giant square-shaped pad divided into four parts with a circle in the middle.
Text on the image: You will never see the far side of the moon from Earth. But putting telescopes there will show us parts of the universe we can’t see from anywhere else. Image: An orange, three-eyed alien sits on a red planet with eyes closed. In the distance is the moon with a large telescope made of four petals.
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