A Possible Dark Matter Search Mission in Space

Abstract

Direct detection of dark matter continues to elude scientists' many attempts to see it interact, and still to this day the only way we know it is there is through observed gravitational effects. The many search experiments are at the point where the search for dark matter direct observation is limited by the solar neutrino background signal here at Earth. Past experiments typically use a large volume central detector looking for energy materializing inside a detector volume that is not associated with any tracks of particles entering the volume through the surrounding active veto array and passive shielding. Here will be presented a new alternative method to see dark matter performing a search by changing the distance away from the Sun where the 1/r$^2$ law could be removed from the observations in a known predictable way. A Dark Matter detector on a spacecraft or built inside an asteroid might be possible. Many near Earth asteroids that can be easily reached by a spacecraft often have paths going in to the orbit of Venus and out to almost the orbit of Jupiter. These asteroids are made of ice, such as Crete, rubble piles of loosely bound boulders and pebbles, or a combination of the two. Landing on an asteroid where a space craft could melt its way under the surface for asteroids made mostly of ice or clawing its way into an asteroid could provide two advantages: shielding from cosmic and gamma rays and the ice that is melted to tunnel into the asteroid could become part of a much larger dark matter detector. Both of these advantages would allow a much larger dark matter detector than could have been brought with the spacecraft from Earth.