Cambridge-led satellite CosmoCube to study early universe from lunar far side
An international team led by the University of Cambridge will deploy a small satellite called CosmoCube to orbit the far side of the Moon to detect the 21-centimetre line—a signal from hydrogen atoms between the Big Bang's afterglow and the formation of the first stars, an era never directly observed before. The Moon will shield the satellite from Earth's radio interference for approximately 40 minutes of each two-hour orbit, allowing it to accumulate 1000 hours of data over an expected two-year mission. The research, published in Nature Astronomy, has received funding from the UK Space Agency, and the team hopes to launch CosmoCube within the next five years.
