The DarkNESS (Dark Matter Nano-satellite Equipped with Skipper Sensors) mission aims to deploy a skipper-CCD CubeSat Observatory to search for dark matter (DM) from Low Earth Orbit. This mission will employ novel skipper-CCDs to investigate O(keV) X-rays from decaying DM, as well as electron recoils from strongly-interacting sub-GeV DM. The DarkNESS mission will be the first space deployment of skipper-CCDs, and the DarkNESS team is developing a skipper-CCD instrument that is compatible with the CubeSat platform. DarkNESS has recently progressed from laboratory validation to a Critical Design Review (CDR) phase, with a launch opportunity anticipated in late 2025. The implementation of the DarkNESS skipper-CCD payload on the CubeSat platform will pave the way for future demonstrators of space-based imagers for X-ray and single-electron counting applications.
@article{arxiv.2412.12084,
title = {DarkNESS: developing a skipper-CCD instrument to search for Dark Matter from Low Earth Orbit},
author = {Phoenix Alpine and Samriddhi Bhatia and Fernando Chierchie and Alex Drlica-Wagner and Rouven Essig and Juan Estrada and Erez Etzion and Roni Harnik and Michael Lembeck and Nathan Saffold and Sho Uemura},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.12084},
year = {2024}
}