# An Overview of CubeSat Missions and Applications
## 5 CubeSats as Astronomical Exploration and Research Enabling Platforms
### UV/VIS/IR Telescopes  
First, telescopes have been used in CubeSats for astronomical observation. They are essentially miniaturized optical telescopes that can capture light across all the spectra. Ultraviolet (UV) telescopes focus on short-wavelength radiation. This allows the study of hot and young stars and planetary atmospheres, as well as interstellar matter. For the study of planetary transits, stellar activity, and other optical phenomena, visible (VIS) telescopes are used to observe objects in the same spectrum as the human eye. Finally, IR telescopes that detect longer wavelengths are crucial for observing cooler objects like brown dwarfs and exoplanets. The Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics (ASTERIA) Satellite was a 6U space telescope developed by NASA's JPL in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) [205]. Launched in 2017 and equipped with an optical telescope (visible and near infrared wavelengths), its main mission was demonstrating two key technologies for reducing systematic noise in photometric observations: high-precision pointing control and high-stability thermal control [206]. However, it conducted several other opportunistic observations, one of which was a marginal detection of the known transiting exoplanet 55 Cancri e. Measuring a transit depth of \(374\pm 170\) ppm, it was the first CubeSat to detect an exoplanet transit. The CubeSat ASTERIA is presented in Figure 12 along with its primary payload. Another CubeSat mission that utilizes a telescope for astronomical observation is SPARCS (STARPLANET ACTIVITY RESEARCH CUBSAT) [207]. Developed by Arizona State University and its partners, SPARCS is a 6U space observatory, capable of both near UV and far UV observations, that is scheduled to be launched in 2024-2025. It will be the first mission dedicated to monitoring the high-energy radiation environments of exoplanets throughout their lifetimes by continuously and simultaneously measuring the Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and Near-ultraviolet (NUV) emission of low-mass stars from young to old. One notable mission is also PicSat, a 3U CubeSat from Paris Observatory, developed to monitor the Beta Pictoris system [208]. It was equipped with a small off-axis optical telescope (35 mm effective diameter, F/D = 4) and its main mission was to detect a possible transit of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b. PicSat was launched in 2018 and deployed on a 505 km Sun-synchronous orbit. However, due to malfunction of the Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS), the satellite never actually pointed toward its target star. Its mission came to an early end after only 10 weeks of operations, when PicSat fell silent. This mission serves as a reminder of the difficulties presented in astronomical observations with CubeSats. Beyond the previously discussed missions, there are more missions that utilize CubeSat for astronomical observations, some of them already launched and some of them upcoming. CUTE (Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment) is a 6U CubeSat developed by the University of Colorado Boulder designed to characterize the composition and mass loss rates of exoplanets using NUV transmission spectroscopy [209]. TOLIMAN is a 16U CubeSat that aims to perform astrometric measurements to detect exoplanets around Alpha Centauri using a high precision diffractive pupil telescope [210]. LUMIO, a 12U CubeSat from the SysNova initiative, which is designed to observe meteoroid impacts one the far side of the moon, uses a high sensitivity wide field camera capable of capturing transient luminous events [211]. One more notable mission is Norbi-2. This 6U CubeSat was developed by Novosibirsk State University (NSU) in collaboration with OKB Fifth Generation Ltd. (Novosibirsk, Russia) and it was launched on June 27, 2023 aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome [215]. Its main objective is to conduct high-resol  
Figure 12: (**a**) A picture of the Arscecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics (ASTERIA) 6U CubeSat during testing [212].