New cereal box-sized satellite to explore alien planets
A new miniature satellite designed and built at has mighty goals. It’s the first CubeSat mission funded by NASA to peer at one class of exoplanets, marking a major test of what these small spacecraft are capable of.
Since its launch in 2021, has been tracking the volatile physics around “hot Jupitersâ€â€”a class of large and extremely hot planets orbiting distant stars. CUTE is measuring how quickly gases are escaping from a minimum of 10 of these exoplanets using its unique, rectangular telescope design. The findings may tell scientists a lot about hot Jupiters and the full range of planets in the galaxy.
“The more places we understand atmospheric escape, the better we understand it as a whole,†said mission principal investigator Kevin France.
CU 91أغجز¸َ Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences graduate students and LASP engineer Nicholas DeCicco install CUTE into the LANDSAT-9 secondary payload dispenser at Vandenberg Space Force Base in July 2021. Photo: NASA/Parsons Corporation.
Principal investigator
Kevin France
Funding
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Collaboration + support
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP); NASA Astronomy; Space 91أغجز¸َ Institute of the American Academy of Science in Graz, Austria; Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland; the University of Toulouse, France; the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands; the University of Arizona
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New cereal box-sized satellite to explore alien planets