Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment

Dr. Tommi Koskinen is a Co-Investigator on the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE), which is a four-year, NASA-funded project to design, build, integrate, test, and operate a 6-unit CubeSat (30 cm x 20 cm x 10 cm). CUTE will have a 1-year mission lifetime and will launch in 2020 and use near-ultraviolet (NUV) transmission spectroscopy from 255 to 330 nanometers (nm) to characterize the composition and mass-loss rates of exoplanet atmospheres. CUTE measures how the NUV light from the host star is changed as the exoplanet transits in front of the star and passes through the planet’s atmospheres. CUTE’s spectrally resolved lightcurve will provide constraints on the composition and escape rates of these atmospheres.