An artist’s rendering of the proposed telescope on the Malapert crater on the moon. Moon Express/ILOA

Read more at: Wired: The Private Plan to Put a Telescope on the Moon
So yes you need an Earth link but I think Earth would be below the local horizon and a mast with a laser or smaller high frequency antenna would provide that link. I imagine the picture was marketing/art departments idea and it is cool.

The whole mission concept is cool and seems to make a lot of sense.

One thing we forget in this ‘later’ more ‘modern’ age is that historically science and scientific instruments were private, and they were not inexpensive it was a rich man’s game and often rich patron’s egos that got us to to the beginning of the twentieth century.

Looks like a great application of a ‘striped down’ mod of a SpaceX Dragon vertical lander…