Transformative science from the lunar farside: observations of the dark ages and exoplanetary systems at low radio frequencies

Abstract

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 determine the amplitude of the 21 cm spectrum to the level required to distinguish the standard ΛCDM cosmological model from those produced by exotic physics such as nongravitational dark matter interactions. FARSIDE has a notional architecture consisting of 128 dipole antennas deployed across a 10 km area by a rover. FARSIDE would image the entire sky each minute in 1400 channels over 0.1–40 MHz. This would enable monitoring of the nearest stellar systems for the radio signatures of coronal mass ejections and energetic particle events, and would also detect the magnetospheres of the nearest candidate habitable exoplanets. In addition, FARSIDE would provide a pathfinder for power spectrum measurements of the Dark Ages. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades’.