The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is a near-UV (NUV), 6U CubeSat designed to characterize the interaction between exoplanetary atmospheres and their host stars. CUTE is dedicated to observing multiple transits of short period planets with a range of masses to measure the transit depths of atomic and molecular nearUV features. These observations will enable us to quantify as a function of wavelength the transit ingress, egress, and depth of exoplanet light curves in order to determine the presence of bow shocks and strong atmospheric mass loss. The CUTE optical system combines a novel rectangular Cassegrain telescope and a holographically-ruled, aberration-correcting diffraction grating. The high-throughput optical system is projected to obtain an average effective area of ≈24 cm² , comparable to previous Explorer class missions (GALEX) in a CubeSat package. This proceeding provides an overview of the science motivation, the final telescope and spacecraft design, and an outline of the mission operation.

Date Published: 6 July 2018
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 10699, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 106990C (6 July 2018); doi: 10.1117/12.2309990

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10699:
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2018: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Jan-Willem A. den Herder; Shouleh Nikzad; Kazuhiro Nakazawa, Editor(s)