CubeSat for Solar Particles explained

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:

• 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.

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

Spacecraft bus

The spacecraft's bus consisted of:

• 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.

Other Artemis 1 CubeSats

• Near-Earth Asteroid Scout by NASA, a solar sail spacecraft that was planned to encounter a near-Earth asteroid (mission failure)
• BioSentinel, 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, a lunar lander (mission failure)
• Cislunar Explorers, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
• Earth Escape Explorer (CU-E³), University of Colorado Boulder

Notes and References

1. News: Roulette . Joey . Gorman . Steve . 2022-11-16 . NASA's next-generation Artemis mission heads to moon on debut test flight . en . Reuters . 2022-11-16.
2. News: Heliophysics CubeSat to Launch on NASAs SLS. NASA. February 2, 2016. 9 March 2021.
3. News: Messier. Doug. SwRI CubeSat to Explore Deep Space. Parabolic ARC. February 5, 2016. 9 March 2021.
4. Web site: Harbaugh . Jennifer . Artemis I CubeSats will study the Moon, solar radiation . . 23 July 2021 . 22 October 2021.
5. Web site: NASA. Artemis I Payload CuSP CubeSat Mission Update. December 8, 2022. Abbey. Interrante. May 26, 2024.
6. Web site: George . Don . April 21, 2016 . The CuSP interplanetary CubeSat mission . California Polytechnic State University.
7. Web site: 2017-08-11 . CuSP Propulsion System . 2022-08-20 . VACCO Industries . en-US.