SunCET
Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker
Examining how massive solar explosions accelerate
The Solar Corona Ejection Tracker is a 6U CubeSat jointly developed by LASP and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. It will take pictures of the sun in extreme ultraviolet light to fill in a crucial gap in the Heliophysics System Observatory that, to date, has been unable to see coronal mass ejections during the phase where they undergo the bulk of their acceleration. SunCET will provide the observations needed to discriminate between the numerous competing theories we already have for how the sun ejects these massive clouds of plasma.
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Launch Date: October 2025
Prime Mission: 8 Months
Co-lead Institutions: LASP and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Lead Funding Agency: NASA Heliophysics
Partners: Goddard Space Flight Center, NCAR High Altitude Observatory, Naval Research Laboratory, SouthWest Research Institute, NorthWest Research Associates
SunCET’s science question is: What are the dominant physical mechanisms for Coronal mass ejections acceleration as a function of altitude and time. It will take pictures of the sun in extreme ultraviolet light with an unprecedented wide field of view (FOV). That FOV is necessary to fill in a crucial gap in the Heliophysics System Observatory that, to date, has been unable to see coronal mass ejections during the phase where they undergo the bulk of their acceleration. SunCET will provide the observations needed to discriminate between the numerous competing theories we already have for how the sun ejects these massive clouds of plasma.
The LASP cubesat mission operations and data systems teams provide the commanding, downlink, data capture and data reduction for SunCET operations.
The SunCET team will publicly provide data when available.