From: Dan Lester [view email]
Date (v1): Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:11:53 GMT   (115kb)
Date (revised v2): Thu, 5 Feb 2004 13:57:34 GMT   (111kb)

Authors: Daniel F. Lester (1), Harold W. Yorke (2), John C. Mather (3) ((1) Department of Astronomy and McDonald Observatory, University of Texas, (2) Division of Earth and Space Science, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, (3) Lab for Astronomy and Solar Physics, Goddard Space Flight Center)
Comments: 14 pages, 1 figure; in press Space Policy

Current thinking about the Moon as a destination has revitalized interest in lunar astronomical observatories. Once seen by a large scientific community as a highly enabling site, the dramatic improvement in capabilities for free-space observatories prompts reevaluation of this interest. Whereas the lunar surface offers huge performance advantages for astronomy over terrestrial sites, free-space locales such as Earth orbit or Lagrange points offer performance that is superior to what could be achieved on the Moon. While astronomy from the Moon may be cost effective once infrastructure is there, it is in many respects no longer clearly enabling compared to free-space.

References and citations for this submission:
SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to , cited by, arXiv reformatted);
CiteBase (autonomous citation navigation and analysis)

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