An experiment led by NASA and the Department of Energy is working toward a scientific pathfinder that can be used on the Moon’s surface at night to measure radio wave signals from the Dark Age of the universe.
DOE’s Office of Science and Brookhaven National Laboratory, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory collaborated for the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment – Night, NASA announced Wednesday.
The LuSEE-Night instrument is being developed to withstand harsh lunar nights, which can reach up to negative 280 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists are depending on the pathfinder to obtain radio wave data and for the first time, gain an understanding of non-luminous matter that existed 380,000 to 400 million years after the Big Bang phenomenon.
The team plans to deploy the device on a commercial payload services flight to the Moon, avoiding radio interference from the Sun and other planets during signal measurements.
