A satellite designed and built by Sonoma State University students is scheduled to launch into space on Thursday, the university announced.
Nicknamed “3UCubed,” the CubeSat mini satellite will be carried aboard a rocket launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc in Santa Barbara County. Once deployed, it will measure atmospheric density and electron precipitation in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The CubeSat was developed as part of NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission. A team of about 70 college students from Sonoma State, Howard University and the University of New Hampshire — studying engineering, computing, computer science, and physics — collaborated to design and build it…