_version_ 1866917442145484800
author Yousuf, Fatima
Li, Zack
Bale, Stuart D.
Barker, David W.
Burns, Jack
Bye, Christian H.
Camacho, Hugo
Cordun, Cristina-Maria
Jones, Johnny Dorigo
Fahs, Adam
Ghosh, Sonia
Goetz, Keith
Grimm, Robert
Herrmann, Sven
Hibbard, Joshua J.
Jeong, Oliver
Klein-Wolt, Marc
Koopmans, Léon V. E.
Krajewski, Joel
Louis, Corentin
Maksimović, Milan
McLean, Ryan
Monsalve, Raul A.
Nigmetov, Arnur
O'Connor, Paul
Parsons, Aaron
Piat, Michel
Pulupa, Marc
Pund, Rugved
Rapetti, David
Rotermund, Kaja M.
Saliwanchik, Benjamin
Slosar, Anže
Speedie, Graham
Stefanov, Nikolai
Sundkvist, David
Suzuki, Aritoki
Vedantham, Harish K.
Zarka, Philippe
author_facet Yousuf, Fatima
Li, Zack
Bale, Stuart D.
Barker, David W.
Burns, Jack
Bye, Christian H.
Camacho, Hugo
Cordun, Cristina-Maria
Jones, Johnny Dorigo
Fahs, Adam
Ghosh, Sonia
Goetz, Keith
Grimm, Robert
Herrmann, Sven
Hibbard, Joshua J.
Jeong, Oliver
Klein-Wolt, Marc
Koopmans, Léon V. E.
Krajewski, Joel
Louis, Corentin
Maksimović, Milan
McLean, Ryan
Monsalve, Raul A.
Nigmetov, Arnur
O'Connor, Paul
Parsons, Aaron
Piat, Michel
Pulupa, Marc
Pund, Rugved
Rapetti, David
Rotermund, Kaja M.
Saliwanchik, Benjamin
Slosar, Anže
Speedie, Graham
Stefanov, Nikolai
Sundkvist, David
Suzuki, Aritoki
Vedantham, Harish K.
Zarka, Philippe
contents The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE-Night) is a joint NASA-DOE-ESA low-frequency radio telescope that will reach the lunar far side in 2027. The unknown dielectric properties of the subsurface at the LuSEE-Night landing site impose the most significant limitation for precision instrument calibration, as reflections from the lunar subsurface can change the primary beam at the 10-20% level. Simulations of these effects have provided insight and concern, showing that the lunar subsurface modeled as a lossy dielectric can absorb a large amount of the power of the sky signal. While this absorption may not strongly impact the signal-to-noise ratio in a sky-noise-dominated regime, it could complicate the beam pattern and make the signal more difficult to model and interpret. We have simulated the far-field properties of the LuSEE-Night beam for varying dielectric profiles of the lunar subsurface. We find that varying the properties of the lunar subsurface has the most significant impact around the antenna resonance, impacting its amplitude, position and width. Conversely, changing the properties of the foreground impacts the data across the band. We use a Bayesian inference pipeline to jointly estimate parameters of a galactic foreground model and dielectric properties of the lunar subsurface around the LuSEE-Night landing site and find that parameters of both the galaxy and subsurface properties can be estimated jointly. While the modeling is somewhat idealized, we believe that the results are largely robust owing to the fact that spectral variations for plausible subsurface and galaxy models have very different spectral signatures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_21170
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Joint Estimation of Properties of the Lunar Subsurface and Galactic Foregrounds with LuSEE-Night
Yousuf, Fatima
Li, Zack
Bale, Stuart D.
Barker, David W.
Burns, Jack
Bye, Christian H.
Camacho, Hugo
Cordun, Cristina-Maria
Jones, Johnny Dorigo
Fahs, Adam
Ghosh, Sonia
Goetz, Keith
Grimm, Robert
Herrmann, Sven
Hibbard, Joshua J.
Jeong, Oliver
Klein-Wolt, Marc
Koopmans, Léon V. E.
Krajewski, Joel
Louis, Corentin
Maksimović, Milan
McLean, Ryan
Monsalve, Raul A.
Nigmetov, Arnur
O'Connor, Paul
Parsons, Aaron
Piat, Michel
Pulupa, Marc
Pund, Rugved
Rapetti, David
Rotermund, Kaja M.
Saliwanchik, Benjamin
Slosar, Anže
Speedie, Graham
Stefanov, Nikolai
Sundkvist, David
Suzuki, Aritoki
Vedantham, Harish K.
Zarka, Philippe
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE-Night) is a joint NASA-DOE-ESA low-frequency radio telescope that will reach the lunar far side in 2027. The unknown dielectric properties of the subsurface at the LuSEE-Night landing site impose the most significant limitation for precision instrument calibration, as reflections from the lunar subsurface can change the primary beam at the 10-20% level. Simulations of these effects have provided insight and concern, showing that the lunar subsurface modeled as a lossy dielectric can absorb a large amount of the power of the sky signal. While this absorption may not strongly impact the signal-to-noise ratio in a sky-noise-dominated regime, it could complicate the beam pattern and make the signal more difficult to model and interpret. We have simulated the far-field properties of the LuSEE-Night beam for varying dielectric profiles of the lunar subsurface. We find that varying the properties of the lunar subsurface has the most significant impact around the antenna resonance, impacting its amplitude, position and width. Conversely, changing the properties of the foreground impacts the data across the band. We use a Bayesian inference pipeline to jointly estimate parameters of a galactic foreground model and dielectric properties of the lunar subsurface around the LuSEE-Night landing site and find that parameters of both the galaxy and subsurface properties can be estimated jointly. While the modeling is somewhat idealized, we believe that the results are largely robust owing to the fact that spectral variations for plausible subsurface and galaxy models have very different spectral signatures.
title Joint Estimation of Properties of the Lunar Subsurface and Galactic Foregrounds with LuSEE-Night
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21170