3UCubed: The IMAP Student Collaboration CubeSat Project

The 3UCubed project is a 3U CubeSat being jointly developed by the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University, and Howard University as a part of the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) 1 student collaboration. This project consists of a multidisciplinary team of undergraduate students from all three universities. The mission goal of the 3UCubed is to understand how Earth's polar upper atmosphere (‘the thermosphere’ in Earth’s auroral regions) responds to particle precipitation and solar wind forcing and internal magnetospheric processes. 3UCubed includes two instruments with rocket heritage to achieve the science mission: an ultraviolet photomultiplier tube (UV-PMT) and electron retarding potential analyzer (ERPA). The spacecraft bus consists of the following subsystems–Attitude Determination and Control, Command and Data Handling, Power, Communication, Structural, and Thermal.