CU Boulder Today: Shoebox-sized cube satellite to study Earth's inner radiation belt

The $4 million Cubesat: Inner Radiation Belt Experiment (CIRBE) mission, tentatively slated for a 2021 launch, will provide some of the first advanced resolution of one of Earth’s two Van Allen belts, a zone that traps energetic particles in the planet’s magnetic field. This powerful radiation, known to physicists since the late 1950s, poses a hazard to solar panels, electronic circuitry and other hardware aboard spacecraft traveling at and beyond a low Earth orbit.