CuSP Spacecraft

First protype of an interplanetary CubeSat space weather station to study solar particles.

Study Solar Particles. First protype of an interplanetary CubeSat space weather station. It will observe space weather events hours before they reach Earth.

1. SIS – Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph 3-70 keV/q
2. VHM – Vector Helium Magnetometer
3. MERiT – Miniaturized Electron & pRoton Telescope 2-150 MeV/q

Returned telemetry for an hour shortly after its deployment but has not been heard from since. Ominously, the last data from the spacecraft showed a temperature spike in one of its batteries.

Carrier briefly detected, then lost. Spacecraft health in question. DSN used special SPK files + OLR to search.

Initial detection over DSS-25 only for 1 hour 16 minutes, with no subsequent detections. Residual frequencies, SNR, and sky frequency were sent to the NOPE and the CuSP spacecraft team, as well as a 1-MHz movie. Telemetry frames from 1-MHz backup recording confirmed that the signal was, in fact, CuSP. Further post-processing analyses found other signal detections in the data—these were found to be RFI from BIOS.

The Southwest Research Institute’s CuSP mission (red), whose intended destination was a heliocentric orbit, had a brief period of carrier detection by the DSN which was lost despite the use of special search techniques

One of 13 SLS 6U Interplanetary or Lunar CubeSats

• ArgoMoon
• BioSentinel
• CuSP
• EQUULEUS
• LunaH-Map
• Lunar IceCube
• LunIR
• Miles
• NEA-Scout
• OMOTENASHI