NASA Set To Launch Shoebox-sized Satellite Studying Earth's Upper Atmosphere

  • Released Wednesday, August 2, 2017
  • Updated Monday, July 29, 2019 at 2:22PM
  • ID: 12602

NASA scientists and engineers named their new CubeSat after the mythological Norse god of the dawn. Now, just days from launch, they are confident the shoebox-sized satellite Dellingr will live up to its name and inaugurate a new era for scientists wanting to use small, highly reliable satellites to carry out important, and in some cases, never-before-tried science.

Dellingr will study how the ionosphere, a region in Earth’s upper atmosphere, interacts with the Sun. Before launch, Dellingr is required to visit to the Magnetic Test Facility at NASA Goddard to test the spacecraft's magnetometers - key instruments for measuring the direction and strength of the magnetic fields that surround Earth.

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch this August aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station where it will be deployed later into a low-Earth orbit.

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Dellingr is purposely designed to be more reliable than more widely used CubeSat platforms and will gather data about the Sun's influence on Earth's upper atmospehre.

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center


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