CosmoCube: A Tiny Moon Mission Aims to Hear the Universe’s Dark Ages

A UK-led project called CosmoCube, a suitcase-sized satellite, would orbit the Moon’s far side to shield from Earth’s radio noise and search for the faint 21-centimeter hydrogen signal from the cosmos before the first stars, potentially revealing how dark matter influenced the early universe; over a planned two-year mission it would accumulate about 1,000 hours of observations using a compact radiometer, with hopes to launch within five years and demonstrate low-cost cosmology from small satellites.