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The Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE) is a NASA spacecraft designed to study the early Universe, 80 to 420 million years after the Big Bang. The observatory is placed in a lunar orbit, using the Moon’s shadow to hide from sunlight and Earth’s radio interference. DARE is 25 feet (7.5 metres) across when its antennae are fully extended. The craft’s highly sensitive instruments can be used to measure redshifted emanations from primeval hydrogen atoms – revealing the moment when the first stars began to emit light.
In its early stages, the Universe was opaque or “foggy”. Light existed, but invisible to modern telescopes. When photons were released (or decoupled), the Universe became transparent. At this point, the only radiation emitted was the 21 cm spin line of neutral hydrogen. DARE uses this precisely redshifted 21 cm transition line from neutral hydrogen (40-120 MHz) to identify and view these first illuminations. This faint radiation is an even more powerful tool than the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for studying the early Universe, giving a whole new perspective that earlier astronomy was unable to provide.
In addition, DARE returns data on the earliest black hole accretions, the reionization of the Universe, ancient galaxy formations and dark matter decay. The craft is operational from 2023.
