Lunar Ultraviolet Cosmic Imager (LUCI) is a small planned telescope that will be landed on the Moon to scan the sky in near UV wavelengths.
Placing a telescope on the surface of the Moon is advantageous because of its absence of atmosphere and ionosphere offers an unobstructed view of the space in all wavelengths.
The Moon surface provides not just a stable platform, but an inexpensive and long-term access to observations in wavelengths not normally used by large orbital telescope missions.
The only UV astronomical observations from the Moon to date were made by Apollo 16 team in 1972[8] and theLunar-based Ultraviolet telescope aboard the Chang'e 3 lunar lander in 2018.
Its primary lens is all-spherical measuring 80 mm transmitting light through the system to a photon-counting charge-coupled device (CCD) detector which is sensitive to ultraviolet wavelengths.