por THE BAJA POST
NEWSROOM
SOURCE: PR NEWSMEDIA
BAE Systems (LON: BA) has successfully completed the integration of the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory’s ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer onto the satellite bus, the next major step in completing the NASA Earth-monitoring satellite.
Carruthers is a small satellite (SmallSat) designed around BAE Systems’ configurable spacecraft platform. Once on orbit at Lagrange Point 1 (L1), the observatory will use an advanced UV imager to observe the exosphere — the outermost part of the atmosphere — to determine how it changes in response to space weather caused by the Sun. Carruthers is expected to be the first SmallSat to operate at L1, a gravitationally stable orbit point between the Earth and Sun about 1 million miles away, and it will be the first satellite to provide continuous observations of the Earth’s exosphere
The mission comes as part of a collaboration between NASA and the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which developed the primary scientific instrument with support from Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory and the Liège Space Center. Dr. Lara Waldrop of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign serves as the principal investigator for the mission.
BAE Systems was responsible for designing and building the satellite bus for the mission, in addition to leading integration and environmental testing, which will continue through June of this year to ensure the satellite will withstand launch conditions and perform properly in space.
The satellite is currently scheduled to launch in 2025 as a rideshare component of NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission.
