This project is a coordinated science program, whose main instrument is a 3-Unit (3U) CubeSat named Cubesat investigating Atmospheric Density Response to Extreme driving (CADRE). The planned science investigation addresses fundamental issues related to ion-neutral coupling, including neutral wind morphology and dynamics that are key to understanding how the thermosphere reacts to energy input and the role this plays in magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. This project brings a unique and comprehensive set of new and existing measurements and modeling to bear on this problem. This includes in-situ measurements from the planned CubeSat of density, temperature, composition, neutral winds, and ion flows of the high-latitude thermosphere and top-side ionosphere, respectively. Very little such data currently exist and cannot be provided on large scale from ground-based instrumentation. Significant portions of the satellite design is based on the Radio Aurora eXplorer (RAX), the first of the NSF CubeSats, which was built at the University of Michigan by students and members of this project team. The advanced instrument payload is a new design that has been developed recently through a collaboration between NASA and the Naval Research Laboratory and will be provided to this project through very substantial leveraging of internal efforts at NRL and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The project adopts a comprehensive observational approach, incorporating a ground-based component that utilizes incoherent scatter radar data for small-scale investigations, SuperDARN radar and Assimilative Mapping of Ionospheric Electrodynamics (AMIE) patterns of the potential for large-scale context, Fabry Perot Interferometer measurements of the neutral winds and temperatures as well as all sky imagery to determine the auroral precipitation. Further, modeling and measurements from other satellite missions, such as Swarm and AMPERE, will be utilized in the interpretation of the data.
The project is a collaboration between University of Michigan and Naval Research Laboratory. The latter will provide the science payload. CADRE is a student driven program, where undergraduate, Master's and Ph.D. students at UM work collaboratively to design, build, test, launch and operate the CubeSat. A full-time Ph.D. student will be involved in every aspect of the project, from the design, integration and testing to the data analysis. Efforts are also planned to reach out to K-12 schools to include them in many of the activities including a popular high altitude balloon program. The raw and processed data will be disseminated in a variety of formats as well as making software available for visualization of the data and the data will be archived at a national repository. The project will produce a wealth of high resolution, high fidelity measurements of the thermospheric neutral winds, temperature and composition that will constitute a valuable resource for the wider atmospheric and space science research community. In addition, the results of the project will help improve space weather modeling and forecasting of neutral density distributions in the upper atmosphere, something that is crucial for accurate orbit determination as well as operational tracking of satellites and collision avoidance. The in-situ neutral winds measurements in question are difficult to obtain making this a high-risk effort but one with immensely high potential pay-off in providing a unique observational dataset of fundamental thermosphere parameters and related cutting-edge, potentially transformational scientific findings.
