NASA’s upcoming Artemis 1 mission may be focused on the moon, but at least one of its payloads will be focused on the sun.
Catching a ride at NASA Artemis 1 is an orbiting CubeSat weather station ground in interplanetary space. The CubeSat for Studying Solar Particles (CuSP) is a unit of six (6U) cubed designed by the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in San Antonio that will study the attack of solar radiation aimed at landalso known as solar wind
The sun continuously ejects energized particles that bombard the Earth, but in some cases, it does so in powerful bursts known as solar flares. While one of the most beautiful side effects of these solar events is the creation of auroras, larger solar events can wreak havoc on our radio communications, satellites, power grids, and even astronauts and air crews that are at risk of exposure to solar radiation.
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 Moon Mission: Live Updates
As it stands, it is very difficult to predict how a solar event will affect Earth. A dozen space weather satellites are monitoring solar radiation from orbit, but that’s not enough to provide a clear forecast.
“Right now, it’s like we’re trying to understand the weather for the entire Pacific Ocean with just a handful of weather stations. We need to collect data from more locations,” Eric Christian, CuSP principal scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center in NASA. said in a statement (opens in a new tab). He suggests putting about 20 CubeSats into different orbits “to understand the space environment in three dimensions.”
CuSP will demonstrate a low-cost way to devise such a network of space weather stations. For this research mission, CuSP will carry three instruments to study solar radiation: the Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph (SIS), built by SWRI; the Miniaturized Electron and Proton Telescope (MERiT), built by Goddard; and the Vector Helium Magnetometer (VHM), built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. They will study low-energy particles, high-energy particles, and the strength and direction of magnetic fields, respectively.
“CuSP will be able to observe events in space hours before they reach Earth,” said Mihir Desai, CuSP’s principal investigator at SWRI. “These interplanetary observations would give us significant insight into what drives space weather, helping scientists improve their simulations.”
Follow Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek (opens in a new tab). follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) and on Facebook (opens in a new tab).