M-Cubed

Spacecraft n°:

US spacecraft n°:

Launch data: Designation  37855 / 11061F Launch date  28 Oct 2011 - 09:48 UT Launch site  Va, SLC-2W Launch vehicle  Delta-7920-10C Mission  Technology, Imaging Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee  462.3 x 818.5 km Eccentricity   Inclination  101.7 deg Period  97.4 min

Spacecraft data:

Description:

• The objective of M-Cubed is to obtain a mid resolution image to date of Earth with at least 60% land mass and a maximum of 20% cloud coverage from a single cubesat platform. S3FL is also developing the MCubed bus with the intention of making it a heritage design, thus allowing for future missions to be flown on the same bus.
• Also on board is JPL's COVE (CubeSat On-board processing Validation Experiment) to demonstrate an on-board processing system to optimize the data processing and instrument design of a multi-angle SpectroPolarimetric Imager (MSPI) for the ACE Decadal Survey mission which will achieve a two-orders of magnitude reduction in data rate.

Mission details:

• Launch from Space Launch Complex 2-West at Vandenberg was at 0948 UTC; Stage 2 reached a 195 x 853 km x 98.7 deg orbit at 0958 UTC. At 1040 UTC a second burn circulazed the orbit at 816 x 819 km and the NPP satellite separated at 1046 UTC.
• The Delta 7920 launch vehicle carried six Cubesats in deployers attached to its final stage. The first P-POD deployer carried three 1U Cubesats, each 1 kg, 0.1m in size: AubieSat-1 from Auburn University, Alabama; M-Cubed (the Michigan Multipurpose Mission) from the University of Michigan; and E1PU2 (Explorer-1 Prime, Unit 2) from Montana State University, which carries one of Van Allen's Geiger tubes.
• Stage 2's third burn at 1120 UTC lowered the orbit and increased inclination, to 458 x 816 km x 101.7 deg (a higher perigee than originally planned). At 1126 UTC the three 1U Cubesats were ejected,
• The University of Michigan M-Cubed cubesat, launched with the NPP weather satellite on Oct 28, 2011 is now thought to be attached to, or entangled with, Montana State's Hiscock Radiation Belt Explorer (E1PU2) cubesat which was ejected along with it. The two craft are being tracked as 2011-61F, catalogue 37855.