U2U

U2U [AFRL]

U2U (Untitled 2U) is picosatellite built by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). It is built to the 2U CubeSat form factor.

U2U carries the Electron and Globalstar Mapping (EGM) Experiment. The satellite from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Small Satellite Portfolio (SSP) utilizes a commercial pulse processing board from Amptek Inc. with a custom preamplifier and solid state detector to measure electron energies and fluxes and in low earth orbit. The spacecraft autonomously beacons this data to the ground in real time using a Globalstar simplex modem. From its 98° inclination, the instrument has an excellent viewpoint on higher latitudes while providing near instantaneous reporting of the local electron environment. As an extremely low-cost mission, U2U supplements existing on-orbit measurements while reducing the technical risk of core instrument components to be flown on AFRL’s Very Low Frequency and Particle Mapper (VPM) CubeSat.

U2U was to be launched in September 2016 on an Atlas-5(401) rocket as a NRO sponsored piggy-back payload, but during launch delays, it was for unknown reasons replaced by OptiCube 4. Likely it has been cancelled.