About time!, I cant wait till we start putting large hardware on the dark side of the moon. That will make JST look like a toy.
About time!, I cant wait till we start putting large hardware on the dark side of the moon. That will make JST look like a toy.
The far side of the moon is no more or less dark than the side we see.
It is from the Moon's perspective. On the visual spectrum the Earth is much larger and more reflective than the Moon. You're looking at something like 40x greater illumination during a 'full Earth' than you get during a full Moon on Earth. Earth is also extremely noisy in the radio spectrum for radio telescopes, while the Moon itself blocks most of all of that out on the far side.
It's not. The nearside is also darker.
Earthshine is brighter than moonshine, sure. Earthshine at its brightest, delivers about 0.15W/sq meter to the moon. Sunshine meanwhile delivers 1360W/sq meter to the moon. The near side of the moon is the only side which experiences eclipses. The amount of energy from the sun is SO large, compared to earthshine, that ~1.5 eclipses per year for a few hours each represents a loss of light that outweighs the additional light gained from earthshine by about 5x.
We're talking fractions of a percent here of course, but it's not ambiguous. The near side of the moon is also the darker side.
You're right that it's noisier in radio.
Details for why ~40x: The Earth is 3.67 times larger in diameter in the lunar sky than the Moon appears in ours. Earth covers 13.5 times more visual sky area and is also about 3 times more reflective per unit area
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, the brightness of the Earth does not outweigh the lost sunlight during lunar eclipses. The near side of the Earth is darker.
The radio silence which makes the far side so attractive will also present our most significant challenge in communicating with that hardware.