Understand
The farside of the Moon is a pristine, quiet platform to conduct low radio frequency observations of the early Universe's Dark Ages, as well as space weather and magnetospheres associated with habitable exoplanets.
- In this paper, the astrophysics associated with NASA-funded concept studies will be described including a lunar-orbiting spacecraft, DAPPER, that will measure the 21 cm global spectrum at redshifts 40-80, and an array of low frequency dipoles on the lunar farside surface, FARSIDE, that would detect exoplanet magnetic fields.
- DAPPER observations (17-38 MHz), using a single cross-dipole antenna, will measure the amplitude of the 21 cm spectrum to the level required to distinguish the standard {\Lambda}CDM cosmological model from those of additional cooling models possibly produced by exotic physics such as dark matter interactions.
- FARSIDE has a notional architecture consisting of 128 dipole antennas deployed across a 10 km area by a rover.