SH030-0006
SunCET: A CubeSat Mission Dedicated to the Middle Corona
Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
James Paul Mason1, Daniel B Seaton2,3, Phillip C Chamberlin1, Joan Burkepile4, Robin C Colaninno5, Karin Dissauer6, Francis Gerard Eparvier7, Yuhong Fan8, Sarah E Gibson9, Andrew R Jones1, Christina Kay10, Michael S Kirk11, Rick Kohnert1, Barbara J Thompson12, Astrid Veronig13, Matthew John West14 and Thomas N Woods15, (1)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)University of Colorado Boulder, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Boulder, United States, (4)National Center for Atmospheric Research, High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, United States, (6)NorthWest Research Associates Boulder, Boulder, United States, (7)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)NCAR, Boulder, CO, United States, (9)NCAR, HAO, Boulder, CO, United States, (10)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (11)Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates, LLC, Boulder, CO, United States, (12)NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (13)University of Graz, Institute of Physics, Graz, Austria, (14)Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium, (15)University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
The Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker (SunCET) 6U CubeSat mission completed its Phase A concept study late this year and is now under review for down-select. The design of SunCET is driven specifically to observe the middle corona: a wide FOV (0-4 Rs) and simultaneous high dynamic range (HDR) detector make this possible without the need for occulters or filters to dim the bright solar disk. SunCET’s driving science question is: “what are the dominant physical mechanisms for CME acceleration as a function of altitude and time?” The majority of CME acceleration occurs in the middle corona, which is a historically underobserved region due to the technological difficulties in measuring this region and the fact that prior mission tradeoffs were driven by other science objectives. I will present a mission overview, examples of the data SunCET will provide, and the types of constraints those observations represent for various CME models.
