Announcement

Time and Place: 2:30 pm, Jun.19, 2014, Room A0709, JiuZhang Building, National Space Science Center. 

Title: Achievements and New Prospects of Our CubeSat Missions

Lecturer: Prof. Li Xinlin

Dept. of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado;

Contact Information:

303-492-3514; lix@lasp.colorado.edu 

More Information:

The Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment (CSSWE), a 3-unit (10cm x 10cm x 30cm) CubeSat, has been on its low earth orbit for over 20 months, continuing to send back high quality measurements of energetic particles: differential fluxes of 0.58 to >3.8 MeV electrons and 9-40 MeV protons. Significant science results about radiation belt physics have been produced and over a dozen peer-reviewed papers about the sciences as well as the engineering efforts have been published.

Following the tremendous success of this simple and robust CubeSat mission, our new generation of CubeSat: a 3-axis-controlled platform to observe the solar soft X-ray (SXR) spectrum between 0.04 - 3 nm, is to be on orbit next year. This new CubeSat mission, nicknamed MinXSS (Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer), has been developed over the past two years, utilizing the very successful Space Hardware Design (CubeSat) course in the department of ASE at CU and the invaluable mentorship from LASP professionals. The science objective of the MinXSS CubeSat is to better understand the energy distribution of solar flare soft X-ray (SXR) emissions and its impact on Earth’s ionosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere (ITM). The peak solar energy in the SXR is expected to be near 2 nm, yet we have limited spectral measurements near that wavelength to verify this expectation. Energy from SXR radiation is deposited mostly in the ionospheric E-region, from ~80 to ~150 km, but the precise altitude is strongly dependent on the SXR spectrum because of the steep slope and structure of the photo-ionization cross sections of atmospheric gases in this wavelength range. Despite many decades of solar SXR observations, almost all have been broadband measurements with insufficient spectral resolution to fully understand the varying contributions of emission lines amongst the underlying thermal and non-thermal continua. MinXSS mission, which will provide this needed spectrum information, was supported by NSF for its early development and recently it has been selected by NASA/H-TIDeS program and will be delivered by the end of this year and to be launched from International Space Station early next year.

Our next generation of CubeSat, which is viewed as extremely ambitious and challenging, is designed to travel to L5 to make both in situ solar wind measurements as well as solar measurements.