The futuristic concept of the Lunar Crater Telescope (LCT) envisions constructing a massive radio telescope inside a lunar crater in order to explore the universe without terrestrial interference such as atmosphere or radio signals. The crater would serve as a natural bowl into which a kilometer-wide metal mesh, deployed by autonomous robots, would be suspended to capture extremely faint radio waves from the depths of space. This concept could provide groundbreaking insights into the “dark ages” of the cosmos – the epoch before the first stars formed – and might even be used to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Fundamental questions in cosmology, such as the nature of dark matter or the expansion of the universe, could also be re-examined with the LCT. By using the Moon’s surface as a stable, interference-free platform, the LCT would become the most powerful radio telescope ever built. The concept is currently being studied under NASA’s NIAC (Innovative Advanced Concepts) program. If realized, the LCT could become operational sometime in the 2030s or 2040s – offering up to one hundred times the sensitivity of Earth-based radio telescopes, with the potential to make revolutionary discoveries. The idea shares clear parallels with China’s FAST radio telescope, which can be seen as the Earth-bound prototype for a future lunar version. Both rely on natural topographical depressions as reflector dishes – FAST uses a karst basin on Earth; the LCT would use a lunar crater. Both telescopes employ flexible mesh surfaces to precisely focus incoming radio waves. The LCT would represent a version 2.0 of FAST – a consistent evolution of the concept, but under ideal conditions, far removed from terrestrial interference.

“oculus lunaris” builds on this foundation to create a techno-mythological scenario: a monumental radio telescope embedded in a lunar crater – a large-scale architectural intervention that recodes the Moon as a platform for scientific research. The telescope’s gaze is not directed toward Earth – which appears only incidentally in the background – but outward, deep into the universe, back into a time before the emergence of the first light. The lunar landscape is not romanticized, but treated as a functional surface – transformed through a precise technological observation system. The work echoes the visual language of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In one scene, the lunar station is shown from above: circular, geometric, and slowly opening like an iris. It resembles a mechanical eye, constructed not only to see but also to receive information. The lunar radio telescope also aligns conceptually with the large-scale interventions of Land Art in the 1960s and 70s. Like these works, “oculus lunaris” understands landscape not as a passive image or symbolic carrier, but as active material – malleable, functional, part of a larger system. The crater is not adorned, but recoded. Nature is not a site of contemplation here, but of measurement – a technical inlay into a still largely untouched terrain. What is today still speculative infrastructure may soon transform the Moon into a projection surface for planetary knowledge production. “oculus lunaris” is a further development of the 2017 work “f.a.s.t.”, extending its investigation of scale, data collection, and technological intervention in the landscape beyond Earth’s surface into the speculative domain of lunar infrastructure.