SAN FRANCISCO – The first NASA-funded small satellite for exoplanet science is continuing to gather data well beyond its expected lifetime. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, known as CUTE, a six-unit cubesat equipped with a telescope to funnel data to a spectrograph, traveled to sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit in September 2021 […]
cubesat
410 posts
LOGAN, Utah — NASA is developing a larger payload adapter for cubesats flying on the next version of the Space Launch System, although it’s unclear if upcoming SLS launches will carry any such secondary payloads. The inaugural flight of the SLS, the Artemis 1 mission that launched last November, carried […]
LOGAN, Utah — A NASA lunar cubesat mission failed to go into orbit around the moon earlier this year when debris blocked propellant lines for the spacecraft’s thrusters. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory declared an end to the Lunar Flashlight mission May 12, five months after its launch as a secondary […]
LOGAN, Utah — A quartet of cubesats launched in May to monitor the development of tropical storm systems is working just in time to support monitoring of the Atlantic hurricane season. Four cubesats for NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission […]
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory cubesat equipped with a Link 16 tactical communications radio will launch to low Earth orbit as early as June on the SpaceX Transporter 8 rideshare. The long-delayed experiment, named XVI, will demonstrate “improved communication with the allied Link-16 community,” a spokesperson for […]
WASHINGTON — A cubesat launched as a secondary payload on Artemis 1 may end its operations at the end of the month unless it can get its propulsion system working. The LunaH-Map spacecraft was one of 10 cubesats launched as secondary payloads on the inaugural flight of the Space Launch […]
SAN FRANCISCO — TrustPoint Inc., a startup developing a cubesat-based global navigation satellite system, launched its first satellite April 15 on the SpaceX Transporter-7 rideshare flight. For Leesburg, Virginia-based TrustPoint, the launch was the culmination of years of work aimed at proving that a highly accurate position, navigation and timing […]
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab has shifted a pair of Electron launches of NASA storm-monitoring cubesats from Virginia to New Zealand, avoiding a potential conflict with another launch. Rocket Lab announced April 10 that a pair of Electron launches of NASA’s Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a […]