The International Lunar Observatory Association and Moon Express have spent years working on their privately-backed, Moon-bound ILO-X telescope. Today, they can finally share the nuts-and-bolts details of their flight test hardware. Not surprisingly, the roughly shoebox-sized device won't come close to matching Hubble between its tiny 130mm, f/5.6 aperture and 6.4-megapixel resolution. However, oneupmanship isn't the point -- ILOA mostly wants its inaugural telescope to be accessible enough that schools, scientists and the public at large can get a peek at deep space through the internet. Most of the challenge rests in getting ILO-X to its ultimate destination. Moon Express won't deliver the telescope to the Moon until sometime in 2015, which will leave us waiting some time for another vantage point on the universe.
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Source: ILOA (PDF)
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