Tiny satellite will use the dark side of the Moon as a shield
A UK-led team of scientists is developing a small satellite called CosmoCube to observe the 'cosmic dark ages' from the far side of the Moon. By using the Moon as a shield against Earth's radio interference, the mission aims to detect signals from the early universe and study the role of dark matter.
Why it matters
This mission could provide unprecedented data on the origins of the universe and the fundamental nature of dark matter.
A tiny UK-developed satellite, roughly the size of a small carry-on suitcase, could help answer one of the biggest questions in cosmology: what happened in the roughly 150 million years of cosmic dark ages, before the universe’s first stars appeared?
An international team of scientists, led by the University of Cambridge, will use the dark side of the Moon as a ‘shield’ so that the satellite – called CosmoCube – can block out all the noise from Earth and listen for a faint whisper from the very early universe.
This whisper, known as the 21-centimetre line, is a signal emitted by hydrogen atoms in the period between the afterglow of the Big Bang and Cosmic Dawn, when nuclear fusion lit up the first stars. No one has directly observed this era before.
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