Sweet Grass – Hierochloe odorata

CubeSat for Solar Particles (CuSP) was a low-cost 6U CubeSat to orbit the Sun to study the dynamic particles and magnetic fields.^[2][3] The principal investigator for CuSP is Mihir Desai, at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas.^[2] It was launched on the maiden flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), as a secondary payload of the Artemis 1 mission on 16 November 2022.^[1][4]

Following deployment from the Artemis launch adaptor, contact with the spacecraft showed that it successfully stabilized and deployed its solar arrays, but contact was long after about an hour.^[5]

Objective

Measuring space weather that can create a wide variety of effects at Earth, from interfering with radio communications to tripping up satellite electronics to creating electric currents in power grids, is of importance. To create a network of space weather stations would require many instruments scattered throughout space millions of miles apart, but the cost of such a system is prohibitive.^[2] Though the CubeSats can only carry a few instruments, they are relatively inexpensive to launch because of their small mass and standardized design. Thus, CuSP also was intended as a test for creating a network of space science stations.^[2]

The CuSP team

CuSP Spacecraft Team:^[6]

Dr. Mihir Desai, PhD: Principal Investigator

Mike Epperly: Project Manager

Dr. Don George, PhD: Mission System Engineer

Chad Loeffler: Flight Software Engineer

Raymond Doty: Spacecraft Technician

Dr. Frederic Allegrini, PhD: SIS Instrument Lead

Dr. Neil Murphy, PhD: VHM Instrument Lead

Dr. Shrikanth Kanekal, PhD, MERiT Instrument Lead

Payload

This CubeSat carried three scientific instruments:^[2][3]

• The Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph (SIS), is built by the Southwest Research Institute to detect and characterize low-energy solar energetic particles.
• Miniaturized Electron and Proton Telescope (MERiT), is built by the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and will return counts of high-energy solar energetic particles.
• Vector Helium Magnetometer (VHM), being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will measure the strength and direction of magnetic fields.

Propulsion

The satellite features a cold gas thruster system for propulsion, attitude control (orientation) and orbital maneuvering.^[7]

Spacecraft bus

The spacecraft's bus consisted of:^[6]

• SwRI Spacecraft Integrator: Design, Assembly, Integration and Test
• SwRI SATYR Command and Data Handling Unit
• SwRI Flight Software
• Clyde-Space AAC Electrical Power System
  • BCR MPPT converters
  • LiPo Batteries and
  • Deployable and Fixed Solar Arrays
• VACCO MiPS Cold Gas Thruster
• Blue Canyon Technologies XACT ADCS with Integrated Thruster Control
• SwRI Spacecraft Structure Mechanical and Thermal (SMT)
• NASA JPL/SDL IRIS X-Band Deep Space Transponder
• NASA GSFC Mission Operations Center
• NASA Deep Space Network Ground Communication

Flight results

• After a successful launch of the SLS at 1:47 am EST on November 16 2022, The Orion/ICPS performed a Trans-Lunar Injection and separated.
• Shortly thereafter, CuSP was deployed from its launch canister in the ICPS.
• Twenty-three minutes after deployment, DSN received Open Loop Receiver (OLR) telemetry from CuSP indicated it had booted up, detumbled, deployed solar arrays, and assumed a SAFE, Sun-pointing, orientation.
• It was operating perfectly until...
• OLR monitoring of the radio signal indicated that the transmitter carrier signal vanished after transmitting for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
• No cause has been determined for this end of transmission.
• Multiple attempts to receive additional signals from the spacecraft failed through the end of 2022. No contact was made.
• The CuSP team fully investigated a sudden battery temperature increase and found it was a telemetry failure. This was verified by comparing redundant indications of several parameters. The redundant indications did not show the suspected excursion. This failure was proven to be the failure of a temperature monitor which saturated the ADC inputs of several signals, but not their redundant monitors fed to an independent ADC.
• The CuSP team fully investigated an anomalous high IRIS Radio temperature. JPL IRIS engineers traced it to a failure to update a scaling equation in the SMOC EGSE. Once the updated equation was applied, the temperature fell in line with all others.
• Plans were to make another attempt during an expected focal convergence, however, no further contact attempts were made to contact the spacecraft.
• Official end of mission was declared December 2023.

Gallery

• 
  CuSP is instrumented and placed in the Thermal Vacuum Chamber.
• 
  Dr. Mihir Desai, Principal Investigator, seen with CuSP
• 
  Dr. Don George, Mission Engineer, testing the Electrical Power System (EPS) on CuSP.
• 
  Dr. Gumby presenting the post deployment sequence of operations of CuSP to a NASA review panel.
• 
  CuSP weighs-in at a 'wet mass' of 10.2 kg, well within the 14 kg mass limit.
• 
  The 'Purple Hands' verify that CuSP fits into its dispenser. This dispenser pushes CuSP out of the launch vehicle.
• 
  The Principal Technician for CuSP, Raymond Doty, makes final 'Pack and Ship' preparations for CuSP.

See also

The 10 CubeSats flying in the Artemis 1 mission

• Near-Earth Asteroid Scout by NASA was a solar sail spacecraft that was planned to encounter a near-Earth asteroid (mission failure)
• BioSentinel is an astrobiology mission
• LunIR by Lockheed Martin Space
• Lunar IceCube, by the Morehead State University
• CubeSat for Solar Particles (CuSP)
• Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map), designed by the Arizona State University
• EQUULEUS, submitted by JAXA and the University of Tokyo
• OMOTENASHI, submitted by JAXA, was a lunar lander (mission failure)
• Cislunar Explorers, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
• Earth Escape Explorer (CU-E³), University of Colorado Boulder

References