Small Spacecraft Community of Practice
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The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment: Chasing Big Planets with a Small Satellite
Speaker: Kevin France, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
10:00AM-11:00AM Pacific Daylight Time
Click here to download the presentation.
Abstract: Atmospheric escape is a process that affects the structure, composition, and evolution of many planets. The signatures of this escape are detectable on close-in, gaseous exoplanets orbiting bright stars, owing to the high levels of extreme-ultraviolet irradiance from their nearby parent stars. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is a 6U CubeSat mission designed to take advantage of the near-ultraviolet stellar brightness distribution to conduct a survey of the extended atmospheres of nearby close-in planets. The CUTE payload is a near-ultraviolet (2487 – 3376 Ang) spectrograph fed by a rectangular, Cassegrain telescope (206 mm x 84mm); the spectrogram is recorded on a back-illuminated, UV-enhanced CCD. CUTE was launched into a polar, low-Earth orbit on 27 September 2021 and has been conducting this survey following an on-orbit commissioning period. I will present an overview of the CUTE mission, including its motivation and development path. I will conclude by presenting on-orbit science data and observations of excess NUV absorption on short-period planets acquired as part of CUTE’s science program.
Biosketch: Kevin France is professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado. He is the PI of the ESCAPE Small Explorer mission, the CUTE small satellite mission, and a NASA-supported sounding rocket program to develop critical path hardware for future astrophysics missions. He is a regular guest observer with Hubble and member of the LUVOIR STDT. Dr. France received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and was awarded NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Fellowship.
S3VI encourages the community to submit questions before the webinar to enable more directed responses. Please send questions to craig.d.burkhard@nasa.gov.
