I am an operations graduate student at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). We at LASP have a sad announcement: the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) mission is de-orbiting by July 21st.
CUTE has been operating since it launched in September 2021 and has faithfully fulfilling its science mission ever since. CUTE is LASP’s longest-ever operating CubeSat, having lasted nearly 5 years. CUTE is still healthy and could have still been taking transit science, if it wasn’t for Solar Maximum thickening the atmosphere. Last year, it was estimated that CUTE may re-enter by July of 2025. We began Low-Drag operations and managed to buy ourselves an extra year of useful lifetime. Unfortunately, the Sun and the atmosphere always eventually win, so CUTE is nearing the end.
If you’re a space enthusiast without a station of your own, feel free to take a look here: the SatNOGs Database has a number of observations from community members.
Please reply here if you’re able to catch some of the farewell song, and see if you can guess what song it is!
Updated CUTE TLE from SatNOGS DB and altitude is 151km and dropping and it looks like Gpredict broke because its not showing the satellite on the map anymore. Edit: now at 147km and dropping still.
Thank you everyone for your attention and tracking. We appreciate you all in the amateur radio community so much! Huge thanks to everyone who helped out across the 5 year mission.
