CX 1 (Citizen Explorer 1)

CX 1 (Citizen Explorer 1) [CSGC]

Citizen Explorer 1 (CX 1) was a small satellite mission by the Colorado Space Grant College. It was designed to provide:

• environmental and space education for K-12 students
• significant experimentation for the scientific community
• real-world experience for undergraduate and graduate student engineers and scientists

During its misssion, the project will bring K-12 students as the ground observers and the virtual mission operators. By doing so, Citizen Explorer mission brings the excitement of space into the K-12 classroom, at the same time opens up a new possibility in satellite operations. Students from all disciplines, elementary education through aerospace engineering, are working between busy class schedules to make this project comes to life.

The Citizen explorer project combines the remote sensing devices on board a satellite and ground observers using hand held instruments to measure long and short term atmospheric events, especially changes in the ozone layers. The satellite has a spectrophotometer capable of observing 280-350 nm wavelengths, and a photometer that measures 365 nm visible wavelengths.

The first of the CX series, CX-1 satellite is currently awaiting a launch date. CX-1 has a preliminary mission life of about one year. During this time students from around the world will be given the opportunity to be a part of a spaceflight mission and help expand the knowledge of the world.

It was to be launched in 2000 with EO 1 (ALI), SAC C and Munin on a Delta-7320 rocket, but missed the launch deadline.