Phoenix Alpine, Samriddhi Bhatia, Ana M. Botti, Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara, Claudio R. Chavez, Fernando Chierchie, Alex Drlica-Wagner, Rouven Essig, Juan Estrada, Erez Etzion, Roni Harnik, Terry Kim, Michael Lembeck, Qi Lim, Bernard J. Rauscher, Nathan Saffold, Javier Tiffenberg, Sho Uemura, Hailin Xu

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) to investigate potential signatures of dark matter (DM). The mission addresses two interaction channels: electron recoils from strongly interacting sub-GeV DM and X-rays produced through decaying DM. Orbital observations avoid attenuation that limits ground-based measurements, extending sensitivity reach for both channels. The mission proceeds toward launch following laboratory validation of the instrument. A launch opportunity has been secured through Firefly Aerospace's DREAM 2.0 program, awarded to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This will constitute the first use of skipper-CCDs in space and evaluate their suitability for low-noise X-ray and single-photon detection in future space observatories.