A7.4 Grand Science from the Moon in International Collaboration as a trigger for the development of a lunar economy
Symposium: A7. IAF SYMPOSIUM ON ONGOING AND NEAR FUTURE SPACE ASTRONOMY AND SOLAR-SYSTEM SCIENCE MISSIONS
Session: 4. Lunar Astrophysics: Scientific Instrumentation and Ancillary Systems
Day: Friday 9 October 2026
Time: 13:45 GMT+3
Room: Hall 5
The Moon presents a distinctive platform for astrophysical observations conducted from its surface, offering environmental conditions that are unparalleled on Earth, stemming from its geophysical properties, low seismic and Newtonian noise, orbital position, tidal locking, high vacuum, large shadowed regions at cryogenic temperatures, wide variety of mineral resources, isolation from terrestrial influences and wide uninhabited areas. These characteristics potentially enable breakthroughs in fields such as radio astronomy, cosmology, multi-messenger and high-energy astrophysics. Realizing such potential is undoubtedly challenging from the technological, financial and legal points of view. Nevertheless, the impact of the science justifies the effort to overcome those challenges. Furthermore, if adequately implemented through international collaboration gathering academy and industry, such endeavors would constitute a unique opportunity not only to advance frontier science, but also to develop the infrastructure and legal framework to enable a sustainable economy on the Moon. The Space Astronomy Technical Committee (SATC) of IAF, gathers both the space science and industry communities, making aware the latter of the future technology needs of the former. As such, the SATC is implementing actions to promote an international effort to identify a key scientific detector which can motivate academia, industry and governments worldwide and serve as the seed for a large lunar infrastructure to shelter a wide variety of future generations of scientific experiments and astronomical observatories. The creation of the A7.4 symposium is one of such actions, which will extend to collaborations with other space related international organizations. We will present a summary of these ideas on of some of the current proposals for large lunar surface experiments, as well as the technical challenges they represent from the point of view of scientific instrumentation, infrastructure and deployment.