Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelengths with Small Satellite Constellations
Authors: Xuelei Chen, Jack Burns, Leon Koopmans, Hanna Rothkaehi, Joseph Silk, Ji Wu, Albert-Jan Boonstra, Baptiste Cecconi, Cynthia H. Chiang, Linjie Chen, Li Deng, Maurizio Falanga, Heino Falcke, Quanlin Fan, Guangyou Fang, Anastasia Fialkov, Leonid Gurvits, Yicai Ji, Justin C. Kasper, Kejia Li, Yi Mao, Benjamin Mckinley, Raul Monsalve, Jeffery B. Peterson, Jinsong Ping, Ravi Subrahmanyan, Harish Vedantham, Marc Klein Wolt, Fengquan Wu, Yidong Xu, Jingye Yan, Bin Yue
Abstract: Due to ionosphere absorption and the interference by natural and artificial radio emissions, ground observation of the sky at the decameter or longer is very difficult. This unexplored part of electromagnetic spectrum has the potential of great discoveries, notably in the study of cosmic dark ages and dawn, but also in heliophysics and space weather, planets, cosmic ray and neutrinos, pulsar and interstellar medium, extragalactic radio sources, and even SETI. At a forum organized by the International Space Science Institute-Beijing (ISSI-BJ), we discussed the prospect of opening up this window for astronomical observations by using a constellation of small or micro-satellites. We discussed the past experiments and the current ones such as the low frequency payload on Chang'e- 4 mission lander, relay satellite and the Longjiang satellite, and also the future DSL mission, which is a linear array on lunar orbit which can make synthesized map of the whole sky as well as measure the global spectrum. We also discuss the synergy with other experiments, including ground global experiments such as EDGES, SARAS, SCI-HI and High-z, PRIZM/Albatros, ground imaging facillities such as LOFAR and MWA, and space experiments such as SUNRISE, DARE/DAPPER and PRATUSH. We also discussed some technical aspects of the DSL concept. Download paper (PDF file 5.5 MB) or .