Lunar CADRE - a CubeSat Array for the Detection of RF Emissions from Exoplanets

The CubeSat Array for the Detection of RF Emissions from Exoplanets (CADRE) concept involves the placement of a swarm of CubeSats into an elliptical Halo orbit behind the Moon. CADRE seeks to deploy a large number of small spacecraft furnished with HF receiving systems behind the Moon (Earth-Moon L2) to form a large aperture for detecting HF emissions from selected Exoplanets. In addition to the HF receivers, each CADRE CubeSat will be furnished with a novel omnidirectional optical communicator developed at JPL which should allow data sharing among the spacecraft at gigabit per second data rates. In this paper we present the proposed CADRE architecture to detect RF emissions from Exoplanet RF emissions. Special focus will be placed on presenting the design of the inter-CubeSat optical crosslink which should allow fast sharing of the detected RF signals for subsequent correlation.