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The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment Mission Overview

2023; Institute of Physics; Volume: 165; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3847/1538-3881/aca8a2

1538-3881

Kevin France, Brian Fleming, Arika Egan, Jean-Michel Désert, L. Fossati, Tommi Koskinen, Nicholas Nell, P. Petit, A. A. Vidotto, Matthew Beasley, Nicholas DeCicco, A. G. Sreejith, Ambily Suresh, Jared Baumert, P. Wilson Cauley, Carolina Villarreal D’Angelo, Keri Hoadley, Robert Kane, Richard Kohnert, Julian Lambert, Stefan Ulrich,

Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies

Atmospheric escape is a fundamental process that affects the structure, composition, and evolution of many planets. The signatures of escape are detectable on close-in, gaseous exoplanets orbiting bright stars, owing to the high levels of extreme-ultraviolet irradiation from their parent stars. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is a 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 magnifying NUV (2479~--~3306 Ang) spectrograph fed by a rectangular Cassegrain telescope (206mm x 84mm); the spectrogram is recorded on a back-illuminated, UV-enhanced CCD. The science payload is integrated into a 6U Blue Canyon Technology XB1 bus. CUTE was launched into a polar, low-Earth orbit on 27 September 2021 and has been conducting this transit spectroscopy survey following an on-orbit commissioning period. This paper presents the mission motivation, development path, and demonstrates the potential for small satellites to conduct this type of science by presenting initial on-orbit science observations. The primary science mission is being conducted in 2022~--~2023, with a publicly available data archive coming on line in 2023.