CUTE

Detailed Information

Link : Mission description

6U CubeSat. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) will have a 1‐year mission life time and plans to launch in early 2021. The mission goal is to train and educate students while conducting scientific research. The onboard science instrument uses nearultraviolet (NUV) transmission spectroscopy from 255 to 330 nanometers (nm) to characterize the composition and mass‐loss rates of exoplanet atmospheres. CUTE measures how the NUV light from the host star is changed as the exoplanet transits in front of the star and passes through the planet’s atmospheres. CUTE’s spectrally resolved lightcurve will provide constraints on the composition and escape rates of these atmospheres, and may provide the first concrete evidence for magnetic fields on extrasolar planets. This mission is similar to the CSSWE, MinXSS‐1, MinXSS‐2 and CSIM, which have gathered over 100 MB of data from amateur operators and were coordinated by the IARU. As has been the case in the past, we will be actively soliciting the telemetry from amateurs. The information provided by amateurs has been crucial for past missions, enabling us to detect instrument orbits and the Doppler‐shifted communication frequencies and troubleshoot anomalies. It is common for all of our missions to have extensive student involvement during the design, building, testing, and operation of the instrument. We take the training of next generation scientists and engineers very seriously. While the exact number of students who are involved in CUTE continues to increase, similar missions such as CSIM, CSSWE, QB50‐Challenger and MinXSS trained over 150 undergraduate and graduate students as part of our ASEN 5018/6028 CubeSat course and independent study. Additionally in August 2018 the University of Colorado and AMSAT‐NA executed a collaborative agreement on the development of communications transponders for small satellites. Our students will continue to be trained in the art of satellite communications, space weather, spacecraft design and operations. All students working on our cubesat projects are strongly encouraged to pursue their radio amateur license if they are not already licensed.