Artist’s conception of the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer, with a simulated sky showing what it will observe. Credit: Naval Research Laboratory

Scientists and engineers selected by NASA are designing a radio telescope destined for the far side of the Moon. The telescope will listen for echos from the “Dark Ages,” the period of time before the formation of the stars. The challenge for the team, made up of representatives from the Naval Research Laboratory and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is designing a telescope that can cope with the conditions on the Moon. Eva Zadeh has the story:

For a transcript of this story, click here.

This is the first episode of MetroLAB with Eva Zadeh: A series of short audio pieces that will drag you inside the labs of the Boston area. You’ll lean about the experiments upon which scientists scratch their heads, and the questions they still need to answer in the fields ranging from neurosciences to particle physics.