activity
20242026
collaborators

5 papers

astro-ph.IM2026

X-ray characterization of fully-depleted p-channel Skipper-CCDs for the DarkNESS mission

Phoenix Alpine, Ana M. Botti, Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara +11

The Dark matter Nanosatellite Equipped with Skipper Sensors (DarkNESS) mission is a 6U CubeSat designed to search for X-ray lines from decaying dark matter using Skipper-CCDs. Thic…

physics.ins-det2025

A compact, low-power epithermal neutron counter for lunar water detection

Julian Cuevas-Zepeda, Phoenix Alpine, Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara +7

The detection and characterization of lunar water are critical for enabling sustainable human and robotic exploration of the Moon. Orbital neutron spectrometers, such as instrument…

physics.ins-det2025

Automating Sensor Characterization with Bayesian Optimization

J. Cuevas-Zepeda, C. Chavez, J. Estrada +6

The development of novel instrumentation requires an iterative cycle with three stages: design, prototyping, and testing. Recent advancements in simulation and nanofabrication tech…

astro-ph.IM2025

DarkNESS: A skipper-CCD NanoSatellite for Dark Matter Searches

Phoenix Alpine, Samriddhi Bhatia, Ana M. Botti +16

The Dark matter Nanosatellite Equipped with Skipper Sensors (DarkNESS) deploys a recently developed skipper-CCD architecture with sub-electron readout noise in low Earth orbit (LEO…

astro-ph.IM2024

DarkNESS: developing a skipper-CCD instrument to search for Dark Matter from Low Earth Orbit

Phoenix Alpine, Samriddhi Bhatia, Fernando Chierchie +8

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…