Overview
- On Friday the mission concept and technical design for CosmoCube were published, presenting a UK-led plan for a suitcase-sized lunar orbiter to target the 21-centimetre hydrogen signal from the cosmic dark ages.
- CosmoCube is designed to operate at 10–50 MHz, unfold a lightweight radio antenna in lunar orbit, and use about 40 minutes of radio-quiet observing during each two-hour orbit to build roughly 1,000 hours of data over a two-year mission.
- The payload uses miniaturized RF-Systems-on-Chip and a Dicke-switched onboard calibrator to stabilise measurements while the team will apply Bayesian foreground removal and antenna-response simulations to separate the faint cosmological signal from much stronger Galactic emission and instrument effects.
- The project has UK Space Agency backing, industry and academic partners including Surrey Space Technology Limited (SSTL) building the SSTL-21 platform, functioning lab prototypes and environmental tests underway, and a target launch within five years under a low-cost mission envelope.
- Researchers warn the Moon’s far side may not remain radio-quiet as more nations plan lunar activity, which shortens the window to gather uncontaminated low-frequency data and could affect the mission’s ability to probe dark matter’s role in early structure formation.