A tiny satellite designed, built and tested by University of Colorado Boulder students to study solar flares may launch as early as Aug. 14 from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, Calif.
Begun in 2008, the satellite project involves more than 60 students from five academic majors under the guidance of CU-Boulder faculty and professional engineers, said principal investigator Xinlin Li, a professor in the aerospace engineering sciences department and a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Called a CubeSat because of its shape, the small satellite is about the size of a toaster and weighs about six pounds.
The mission, called the Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment, is a collaborative effort between the aerospace engineering sciences department and LASP and includes a science payload known as the Relativistic Electron and Proton Telescope Integrated Little Experiment, or REPTile. 听The student payload is a scaled-down version of an instrument built at LASP for NASA鈥檚 Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission that is slated for launch later this month.
The goal of the student mission is to study solar flares -- violent processes emanating from the sun that are associated with large energy releases -- and how the particles released during such events affect Earth鈥檚 radiation belt, said aerospace engineering sciences Professor Scott Palo, a co-principal investigator on the project. Students will monitor the incoming satellite data from a campus ground station operated at LASP.
鈥淥ur students have worked incredibly hard to overcome the challenges of building a real flight-ready mission,鈥� said Li. 鈥淢any alums will be glued to NASA TV, watching the launch of a satellite that represents many years of learning and effort.鈥�
The project is funded by the National Science Foundation. NSF鈥檚 CubeSat Program supports satellite missions as student training grounds for the next generation of space scientists and aerospace engineers. The satellite will launch on an Atlas V rocket along with 10 other CubeSat satellites from other institutions from around the country under NASA鈥檚 Educational Launch of Nano-Satellite program.
The system engineer on the CubeSat project is CU-Boulder graduate student David Gerhardt.听 The program manager is graduate student Lauren Blum.
Contact:
Xinlin Li, 303-492-3514
Xinlin.li@lasp.colorado.edu
Scott Palo, 303-492-4289
Scott.palo@colorado.edu
David Gerhardt, 757-646-3445
dtgerhardt@gmail.com
Lauren Blum, 917-767-6626
lwblum@gmail.com
Jim Scott, CU media relations, 303-492-3114
CU-Boulder students Ian Dahlke, left, and David Gerhardt celebrate a successful clean room lab test of a CubeSat satellite slated for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Aug. 2. (Photo courtesy LASP)
