2024 Workshop: IT CubeSats Missions
Bryce Halter
Aimee Merkel
Scott Palo
Diana Swanson
Charles Swenson
Maggie Zheng
In the past five years, a number of CubeSat missions have successfully provided observations of the Ionosphere and lower thermosphere. Missions such as SORTIE, IDEASSat,INSPIREsat1, DAILI, SPORT, and LLITED have provided a range of neutral and plasma measurements at altitudes below 550 km from a variety of instruments. This workshop focusses on the contributions of past, current, and future NSF and NASA CubeSat missions and the role of their observational data in ongoing IT studies. The three objectives of the workshop are:
1. Highlight observations and science returns from recent CubeSat missions.
2. Forge collaborations among current and future CubeSat missions along with ground-based instruments and facilities for expanded studies and enhanced science returns.
3. Promote observational capabilities of soon-to-be launched IT CubeSats.
The maturing of CubeSats from technology demonstrations to more science and observational focused missions has begun to firmly establish their potential for significant contributions to aeronomy research. In recent years, the number of IT focused science missions has increased, paving the way for a potential grassroots IT observatory. Through a combination of individual CubeSat missions, sophisticated ground-based instruments, data buys from LEO commercial constellations, hosted payloads, and the more traditional satellite mission, will allow the community to investigate the physics of the global IT. It is important to understand the type of observations that can be obtained, their quality, and the level of science investigations enabled by recent CubeSat mission in order to incorporate them into future IT studies and experiment plans.