3UCubed: The IMAP Student Collaboration CubeSat Project

TL;DR

The 3UCubed project is a collaborative effort among three universities to develop a 3U CubeSat for studying Earth's polar upper atmosphere and magnetospheric responses to solar wind, aiming for launch in 2025.

Contribution

This paper details the design, development, and collaborative approach of the 3UCubed CubeSat, a new student-led mission integrated with the NASA IMAP project.

Findings

Design and development of 3U CubeSat with two scientific instruments

Progress in engineering model testing and system integration

Scheduled launch around Solar Cycle 25 peak in 2025

Abstract

The 3UCubed project is a 3U CubeSat being jointly developed by the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University, and Howard University as a part of the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, IMAP, student collaboration. This project comprises of a multidisciplinary team of undergraduate students from all three universities. The mission goal of the 3UCubed is to understand how Earths polar upper atmosphere the thermosphere in Earths auroral regions, responds to particle precipitation and solar wind forcing, and internal magnetospheric processes. 3UCubed includes two instruments with rocket heritage to achieve the science mission: an ultraviolet photomultiplier tube, UVPMT, and an electron retarding potential analyzer ERPA. The spacecraft bus consists of the following subsystems: Attitude Determination and Control, Command and Data Handling, Power, Communication, Structural, and Thermal. Currently, the project is in the post-PDR stage, starting to build and test engineering models to develop a FlatSat prior to critical design review in 2023. The goal is to launch at least one 3U CubeSat to collect science data close to the anticipated peak of Solar Cycle 25 around July 2025. Our mother mission, IMAP, is also projected to launch in 2025, which will let us jointly analyze the science data of the main mission, providing the solar wind measurements and inputs to the magnetosphere with that of 3UCubed, providing the response of Earths cusp to these inputs.