NASA and the US Department of Energy hope to build a lunar telescope on the far side of the Moon that will hunt for ancient radio waves emitted just 380,000 years after the Big Bang. 

Studying the origins of the universe is difficult; there isn't much data and astronomers form theories by piecing together bits of evidence from astronomical observations. The best proof supporting the Big Bang, which describes how the universe formed and rapidly expanded roughly 13.8 billion years ago, is the cosmic microwave background.

Before the first stars formed, the universe was in the so-called Dark Ages. Atoms were just starting to form and emitted photons. The energy from these photons has stretched as the universe has expanded over time to become a source of radio energy.

Now, NASA and the DoE have launched a new project, named the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night) to try and find this ancient signal leftover from the Big Bang.

"Modeling the universe is easier before stars have formed. We can calculate almost everything exactly," Anže Slosar, a physicist leading the DOE's efforts for the project at Brookhaven National Laboratory, said in a statement.

"So far, we can only make predictions about earlier stages of the universe using a benchmark called the cosmic microwave background. The Dark Ages Signal would provide a new benchmark. And if predictions based on each benchmark don't match, that means we've discovered new physics."

Finding the signal amongst noise and interference from other radio sources, however, requires placing a probe somewhere incredibly isolated like the far side of the Moon.

"The Moon and Earth are tidally locked, which means that the moon rotates around its own axis with the same velocity as it does around the Earth," Slosar explained. "This is why we always see the same side of the moon. But the side we can't see, the lunar far side, is shielded from many sources of radio interference at night by the moon's own mass."

https://www.theregister.com//2023/03/14/nasa_moon_telescope/