3UCubed
Mission Facts
Launch date
Fall 2025
Mission duration
2 years
Collaboration between
Student Collaboration (StC) of IMAP:
University of New Hampshire
Sonoma State University
Howard University
Objective
To determine how the Earth’s thermosphere in the auroral and cusp regions responds to particle precipitation and varying conditions
3UCubed is a 3U (30 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm) CubeSat, which is scheduled to launch at the end of 2025 in a high-inclination low-Earth orbit (LEO). It was selected for launch through the 13th NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) and is funded as part of the student collaboration of the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission.
3UCubed, named for Uplifting Undergraduate students to study Upwelling has for science objective the determination of how the Earth’s thermosphere in the auroral and cusp regions responds to particle precipitation and varying conditions associated with solar wind forcing and internal magnetospheric processes. Data from the mission analyzed in combination with data from IMAP will help better understand thermospheric drag and advance our understanding of the lifetime of satellites in LEO.
The Student Collaboration (StC) of IMAP is a collaborative hardware program involving three universities, the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University and Howard University with funding from the Heliophysics Division of the NASA/Science Mission Directorate.
