A Different Kind of CuPID

PhD student Emil Atz (ENG’22) (right) and Jacqueline Bachrach (ENG’23) are members of the Walsh Lab team that built the CuPID (Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector) Cubesat Observatory spacecraft, a collaboration among BU, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Aerospace Corporation, and several other academic institutions. In orbit, the 6U spacecraft, roughly the size of a toaster oven, will carry a wide field-of-view soft X-ray telescope and will measure soft X-rays emitted from the process of charge-exchange when plasma from the solar wind collides with neutral atoms in the Earth’s distant atmosphere. The spatial and temporal patterns of X-ray images will be used to address scientific questions. CuPID is scheduled to launch in September. June 30 photo by Cydney Scott